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When your godmother is Dolly Parton, her advice isn’t just golden — it’s gospel. Miley Cyrus has revealed that her new song “More to Lose”, a heartfelt standout from her upcoming album Something Beautiful, was nearly left off the record… until Dolly heard it. With one phone call, the country icon reminded Miley of the power of vulnerability — and gave her the courage to sing it anyway. The result? A love letter from one generation of storytellers to the next

Introduction

Miley Cyrus has always had a deep connection to country music royalty, and that bond goes far beyond her father, Billy Ray Cyrus. Her honorary godmother, Dolly Parton—whom she fondly calls “Aunt Dolly”—recently played a meaningful role in inspiring a song on Miley’s upcoming album, Something Beautiful.

In a heartfelt message shared on Instagram, Miley captioned a video with the words, “I will always love you Aunt Dolly.” While the caption might seem like a simple tribute, it revealed a touching story behind the creative journey of her latest single, “More to Lose.”

Dolly Parton Inspires Miley’s Latest Work

Born in 1992 in Franklin, Tennessee, Miley Cyrus has long been close to Dolly Parton, who has acted as a guiding light in both her personal life and musical career. During a Christmas visit with Dolly in late 2024, Miley had the chance to share early demos from her ninth studio album.

“I played her Something Beautiful, and I was so excited because she had just released her rock album,” Miley recalled. That album, Rockstar (2023), included a memorable duet between Dolly and Miley on the song “Wrecking Ball,” originally released by Miley in 2013.

When Dolly first listened to the new material, she asked, “Alright, I see what you’re doin’ here. You got any hits?” Miley admitted, “At that point, I didn’t think I had one, so I bluffed and said, ‘Yeah, it’s called More to Lose,’ even though I hadn’t written it yet.”

The idea stuck with her. Back in Los Angeles on January 2, Miley entered the studio with the visit fresh in her heart and wrote what would become the song she now calls her own version of I Will Always Love You—the timeless classic made famous by Dolly herself.

“This is my song for Aunt Dolly,” Miley said, describing “More to Lose” as a deeply personal tribute.

Watch the official music video for “More to Lose” below:

More Than Just an Album — A Visual Experience

Something Beautiful is set to be released on May 30, 2025, but this album offers more than just audio. Miley has also co-directed a 55-minute visual film that accompanies the record.

Premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 6, the film—also titled Something Beautiful—will hit theaters across the United States for one special day only on June 12.

The project was filmed by renowned cinematographer Benoît Debie, known for his work on Spring Breakers (2012) and Climax (2018). Miley described the film as her modern response to The Wall by Pink Floyd, blending rich visuals with healing musical themes.

Miley Reflects on the Emotional Heart of the Project

In a conversation with Harper’s BAZAAR, Miley opened up about the intention behind the film and album: “The visual component of this is driving the sound. It was important for me that every song has these healing sound properties.”

She continued, “Even when the songs deal with loss, heartbreak, or destruction, they’re presented in a way that finds beauty in pain. The darkest times in our lives have purpose—they are the shadows that create contrast in the artwork of life. You can’t paint without both highlights and depth.”

Watch a teaser for the visual album here:

 

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Country Music

HE SURVIVED TWO HEART ATTACKS, A TRIPLE BYPASS, AND A LIFE OF NASCAR RACING — BUT ON DECEMBER 8, 1982, MARTY ROBBINS’ BORROWED TIME FINALLY RAN OUT.Country music legend Marty Robbins passed away on December 8, 1982, at St. Thomas Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee. He was just 57 years old. His death came six days after an eight-hour quadruple bypass surgery, following a massive heart attack on December 2 — the fourth of his life.In his final days, Robbins was kept alive by life-support systems while his family kept vigil. He had lived with cardiovascular disease since 1969 and was one of the earliest patients ever to receive bypass surgery. Just two months before his death, in October 1982, he had been inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame — a final honor he was able to witness.Earlier that same year, Robbins walked into a Nashville studio for what would become his last major recording session. He laid down the title track for a Clint Eastwood film about a fading country singer making one last record before time ran out — a role Robbins also played on screen, in his final film appearance. The song became a posthumous Top 10 hit, the haunting closing chapter of a career that produced 16 number-one country singles and the first Grammy ever awarded to a country song.

Country Music

“NO ONE SINGS PAIN LIKE Merle Haggard” — and by 1980, he had already lived every word of it. When Back to the Barrooms arrived that year, it wasn’t sold as a revival or a reinvention. It sounded like a man returning to the place where his stories were born. Haggard had spent years turning prison time, broken homes, and hard choices into songs like “Mama Tried” and “Sing Me Back Home,” and by 1980 his voice no longer argued with the past — it carried it. Nashville didn’t hear a comeback. It heard proof. Proof that pain didn’t need polishing, only honesty. Some say Merle didn’t write to escape his history — he wrote to keep it breathing. And maybe that’s what really changed by 1980: the outlaw wasn’t running anymore. He was standing still, letting country music look straight at what it felt like to survive yourself.

Country Music

SOME CALLED HIM A COWBOY — MARTY CALLED IT A STORY. They say every great country song begins with a face you can’t forget — and for Marty Robbins, it was never just one woman, one gunfight, or one lonely road. It was the moment when a voice met a memory and decided not to let go. Rumor has it, the idea for one of his ballads came after midnight in a quiet Texas café. Marty sat alone with black coffee, watching a waitress wipe down empty tables. Outside, a freight train howled through the dark like it was carrying someone else’s goodbye. “That sound,” he told a friend, “that’s not a train. That’s a man leaving something behind.” And just like that, a song was born. When his western tales reached the radio, they weren’t just hits — they were moving pictures. Gunfighters who knew they wouldn’t win. Lovers who stayed too long. Men who chose honor even when it hurt. Marty didn’t sing like he was performing. He sang like he was remembering. Behind the drama, though, was something simple and human: he wrote about people who made the wrong choice for the right reason. And maybe that’s why his songs still ride through late-night radios and movie endings — like an old cowboy who never really left town.Have you ever heard a Marty Robbins song and felt like it already knew the ending of your own story?

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EVERYONE IN NASHVILLE HAD AN OPINION ABOUT DOOLITTLE LYNN. LORETTA LIVED WITH THE PART THEY COULD NEVER SEE. They called him a drunk. They called him worse. They watched Doolittle Lynn stand in the back of the room at Loretta’s shows and thought they understood the marriage from across the floor. But Loretta’s life was never that simple. Doo bought her first guitar, pushed her to sing when she did not yet believe she belonged on a stage, and drove her from honky-tonks to radio stations in a car that sometimes carried more hunger than gasoline. He believed in her voice before she fully knew what it could become. He also broke her heart more times than country music could count. Loretta turned those wounds into songs — “Fist City,” “Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’,” “You Ain’t Woman Enough” — not as fiction, but as survival with a melody. When she said, “He never hit me one time that I didn’t hit him back twice,” it was not a clean love story. It was a window into a marriage built from poverty, pride, violence, loyalty, children, ambition, and a kind of stubbornness modern listeners may never fully understand. Forty-eight years. Six children. A woman who became a legend partly because one man pushed her forward — and partly because that same man gave her so much pain to sing through. That does not make the hurt romantic. It makes the story harder. Maybe the real question is not whether Doo Lynn was good or bad. Maybe it is how many women from Loretta’s generation had to turn heartbreak into strength because nobody had taught them another way to survive.

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HE LOST JUNE IN MAY. HE DIED IN SEPTEMBER. AND THEN THE WORLD FINALLY UNDERSTOOD WHAT JOHNNY CASH HAD BEEN TRYING TO SAY ALL ALONG. Johnny Cash had fought pills, prison, sickness, guilt, and the devil for most of his life. But losing June Carter Cash in May 2003 was the one fight he never seemed built to survive. She had been his wife, his harmony, his anchor, and the woman who had stood beside him when the Man in Black was still trying to crawl out of his own darkness. Four months later, on September 12, 2003, Johnny followed her. He was 71. Friends said life became a struggle after June was gone; Kris Kristofferson told People that Cash cried every night. At his final public performance that July, Johnny still sang, still worked, still tried to keep going — but everyone could hear the emptiness June had left behind. Then the world did something strange. It made him larger after death than he had been in his final years. “Hurt” reached a generation raised on MTV, not Sun Records. Justin Timberlake even used his own VMA speech to say Johnny deserved the award more than anyone in the room. Two years later, Walk the Line brought Cash and June’s story to movie theaters around the world, grossing nearly $187 million and winning Reese Witherspoon an Oscar. But maybe none of that would have impressed Johnny as much as people think. Because the man who sang “I Walk the Line” for June spent his whole life trying to keep that promise. He just could not keep walking very long without her.

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HE WROTE “OKIE FROM MUSKOGEE” IN MINUTES ON A TOUR BUS. AMERICA SPENT FIFTY YEARS FIGHTING OVER WHAT IT MEANT — AND FORGOT TO LISTEN TO THE MAN WHO WROTE IT. Merle Haggard grew up in a converted boxcar in Bakersfield, California. His father died when Merle was still a boy. By his twenties, he had already seen juvenile halls, train tracks, hard poverty, and San Quentin from the inside. That kind of life does not usually leave much room for people to flatten you into a slogan. But one song nearly did. “Okie from Muskogee” began on a tour bus, sparked by a joke and shaped into a portrait of the people Merle knew: his father’s generation, Dust Bowl families, working people who did not march, did not make the news, and did not have polished language for why the world suddenly seemed to be changing without them. Then America grabbed it. Conservatives turned it into an anthem. Liberals turned it into an accusation. Both sides found what they needed and left Merle standing somewhere in the middle, trying for decades to explain that the truth was more complicated than either side wanted. Meanwhile, he kept writing. “Mama Tried.” “The Fugitive.” “If We Make It Through December.” Thirty-eight number one hits — more than any country artist of his era. Songs about poverty, prison, loneliness, and survival that said more about working class America than any politician ever did. Johnny Cash called him the best. Bob Dylan said he was one of the greatest living songwriters. He died in 2016 on his birthday. Still recording. Still too complicated to fit inside one argument. Maybe it’s time the rest of us stopped letting one song decide who Merle Haggard was. He wrote thirty-seven others that told the rest of the truth.

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HE MET HER BACKSTAGE AT THE OPRY IN 1956. HIS LAST SHOW WAS ON HER FAMILY’S STAGE IN 2003 — SEVEN WEEKS AFTER SHE WAS GONE. Johnny Cash first met June Carter backstage at the Grand Ole Opry in 1956. She came from the Carter Family — the family that helped build country music itself. He would marry her in 1968, and for thirty-five years she became the voice beside him, the hand that steadied him, and the woman he believed could still reach him when the dark places did. On May 15, 2003, June died. She was 73. Seven weeks later, Cash sat on a stool at the Carter Family Fold in Hiltons, Virginia — the small wooden stage tied to her family’s name. He could barely see. His hands shook. But he played. Before singing, he told the crowd, “The spirit of June Carter overshadows me tonight.” Then he gave them “Ring of Fire,” “Folsom Prison Blues,” “I Walk the Line,” and finally “Understand Your Man” — the last song he would ever perform for an audience. On September 12, he was gone. He was 71. He met her in the house of country music. He said goodbye from the house her family built. And in between those two stages, Johnny Cash and June Carter turned a difficult love into one of country music’s most unforgettable stories.