Noah Cyrus may have grown up in one of music’s most high-profile families, but after years in and around the spotlight, she emerges as her own woman and a fully realized artist. On her new album I Want My Loved Ones to Go With Me, Noah makes clear her independent voice and vision — while still recognizing those who shaped her. The album’s 11 tracks are all inspired by people Noah loves or has loved.
“For a long time, I couldn’t really trust in my own choices. I had to learn how to make decisions for myself and make that transition into adulthood,” Noah, now 25, says. “But I’ve found who I am, also as an artist, and this record shows what I’ve had inside me all this time. This album is me.”
Co-produced by Noah with her trusted collaborators Mike Crossey and PJ Harding, I Want My Loved Ones to Go With Me is an album rooted in Americana, indie folk, and country music. It’s a moody, dynamic listening experience mixing whispered vocals with full-throated declarations of personal independence and commitment to a partner, all tied together by gorgeous organic instrumentation. Pedal steel, banjo, dulcimer, mandolin, cellos, and acoustic guitars frame Noah’s smoky yet supple voice.
“When I was a kid, I was so enamored of how each instrument came together with the beat to create a memorable moment in a song, like the outro chorus in my new songs ‘Don’t Put It All on Me’ and ‘New Country.’ I remember asking my father, ‘Dad, what’s that called?’ and he said, ‘Sissy, that’s called dynamics,’” Noah says. “I think of that every time I walk into a studio to make my own music. I’m always focused on sonics and dynamics.”
“Apple Tree,” written by Noah with Harding and Mikky Ekko, embodies the album’s aesthetic. Over a brooding piano melody, Noah sings, “Love is a bottomless pit/And because of you I’m falling forever in it,” evoking the gothic wordplay of inspirations like Nick Cave and Leonard Cohen. Near song’s end, she unleashes a cathartic, wailing vocal before ceding the spotlight to a voice from long past: that of her grandfather, Ron Cyrus, who is heard reciting a hymn written by Eldon Lindsey Cyrus, Noah’s great grandfather. The hymn’s title — “I Want My Loved Ones to Come With Me” — inspired the name of Noah’s album, and she pays tribute to her great-grandfather’s song by echoing its melody in “Apple Tree” via the crescendo of its pianos.
“All of my thoughts turn back to days of childhood… My father and mother, sisters and brothers, I never dreamed how far we’d roam,” Noah’s grandfather, whom they called “Pappy,” says in the vintage audio sample that inspired the album’s title. “When I hear that part of the song, I see my mom tucking me in, I see us with my dad up on the hill by the fire. Memories of us all together flood my mind,” Noah says “Thats something I really hope for. Death itself doesn’t scare me, but the chance of never seeing my loved ones together again after death, terrifies me.”
Noah pays homage to members of her family in ways both subtle and overt throughout the album. She records a song her brother Braison wrote for her, “Don’t Put It All on Me,” and turns it into a collaboration with Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes, one of Braison’s favorite bands. “My brother observed our family dynamics and how in some ways I’d take it all upon my shoulders and he wrote that song from his perspective,” she says. “We’ll always be there for each other and I wanted to honor him with that performance.”
She also brings to life the very first song her father, Billy Ray Cyrus, ever wrote. “With You” is a crisp electric-guitar ballad about undying devotion: “Just listen in the wind and know that I’m your friend/And always with you,” she sings. “My dad is one of my biggest influences,” Noah says. “He turned me on to so many great songs and artists. My musical inspirations came from somewhere, and more often than not, it’s been him.”
There’s also a nod to her father’s influence in “I Saw the Mountains,” a tale of recognizing and communing with the beauty in nature. As a child of Tennessee and California, Noah was always outdoors, and often on horseback. “The harmony between people and the earth is really taken for granted,” she says. “My dad taught us from an early age to connect with nature and the animals that inhabit it.”
She sings about her mom in the song as well, and the unbreakable bond between mother and child, using a river as an analogy as she strives to go “back to the mother that I long to see.”
Those themes — of family, of nature — pair effortlessly with Noah and Crossey’s immersive interpretation of country music. They tip-toed around the genre on Noah’s full-length debut, 2022’s The Hardest Part, but throw themselves headlong into its sounds on I Want My Loved Ones to Go With Me, even enlisting Americana darling Bill Callahan, for the vulnerable “XXX,” and a pair of Nashville guests: No less than veteran superstar Blake Shelton duets with Noah on “New Country,” while red-hot vocalist Ella Langley appears on “Way of the World.”
The latter, with its easygoing groove, is reminiscent of the Eagles’ California country and Noah’s favorite song by Bob Seger, “Against the Wind,” as the women trade lines and lean into the track’s free-spirit vibes — it’s reminiscent of the groundbreaking Trio album by Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, and Emmylou Harris. The lyrics underscore Noah’s mature writing style, as she charts a life from birth to its end: “You can’t return to the safe space you lost,” she sings, “From your mother’s womb/Into the chaos of a cold hospital room.”
On “New Country,” Noah plants her flag of independence, with harmonies from the iconic Shelton, whose appearance co-signs Noah as a true country songwriter. “All these eyes on you/Waiting on you to fall/Cause the box they put you in/Just don’t fit you anymore,” goes one lyric. Elsewhere, she writes about being unable to ever go back: “Then you have to find new country.”
“It’s a song about finding a new place in life, no matter where you go, there you are,” she says. “The only constant is change.”
So Noah continues to walk, confident in the knowledge that she’s found herself and hopeful that listeners will too.
“I want this album to offer fans a sense of comforting, peaceful nostalgia. That’s something that I feel so heavily when I listen to music. We all want to connect with our past while also being aware of the present moment. Music does that for me, and this collection of songs was made with that in mind,” Noah says. “I want to evoke that feeling of a comforting friend that a song can be — and allow us all to heal.”
