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Before Noah Cyrus started making music herself, she watched her big sister Miley take the entertainment world by storm — and she took some notes.
“I really saw [her early career] from the perspective of a sister and as a kid. By the time she was done with Hannah [Montana], I wasn’t even driving a car yet — I didn’t even drive when she was doing Bangerz, so that puts it into perspective,” Noah, 25, tells PEOPLE of Miley, 32. “But of course, there’s situations that you experience, and you’re like, ‘Okay, I will keep that in mind for the future and for: If that happens to me, how do I handle it?’ So I’ve had a great role model for how it all works.”
Noah began her own recording career at age 15, when she was signed by a major label, then released her first single “Make Me (Cry)” featuring Labrinth the next year. While she didn’t necessarily ask for advice, she still learned some lessons on navigating the industry from watching her sister.
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“I didn’t really look at what she was doing as like, ‘Oh, I’m learning from this.’ As I got older though, and by the time I was 16 and doing my own thing, I did experience parts in her career that I guess maybe felt like in her perspective were harder points or growing periods or changes that were just good examples of what to do or what not to do or what to let someone do or what means you’re getting taken advantage of,” adds Noah, who was nominated for Best New Artist at the 2021 Grammys. “I think there were just a lot of lessons that just came with it because our age gap.”
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The sisters have collaborated together over the years. In 2020, Noah released a live duet version of her song “I Got So High That I Saw Jesus” with Miley. And in 2022, Noah joined her sister onstage to perform a cover of family friend Dolly Parton’s hit “Jolene” during Miley’s New Year’s Eve Party.
Leeor Wild
Noah’s new album, I Want My Loved Ones to Go with Me, was a family affair. The record — which she’ll promote on a tour that launches Sept. 12 — features four generations of Cyruses. “Apple Tree,” includes a sample of a recording of a hymn written by her great-grandfather, sung by her paternal grandfather. Another, “With You,” was the first song her dad, Billy Ray, ever wrote. And her Fleet Foxes duet “Don’t Put It All on Me” was actually inspired by Noah but written by her brother Braison, 31.
“It really was beautiful to have that bloodline [running] through the record,” says Noah, who coproduced the album.
One lyric on “Don’t Put It All on Me” rings especially true to her family’s dynamic, she says: “The words that were spoken / Mean nothing to me.”
“I think that really sums up a relationship with a sibling,” Noah says. “There’s so many times, especially in my relationship with my siblings growing up, you fight and you say things — but that’s your family, and they’re always going to be there for you, and I’m lucky enough to say that that’s been my case with me and my siblings and my family.”
