The Cyrus You Weren’t Expecting
The name Cyrus comes pre-loaded. Say it out loud and you’re already picturing a wrecking ball, a foam finger, a VMAs performance that generated enough think-pieces to fill a small library. Miley Cyrus’s transformation from Disney darling to full-throated provocateur was one of the more entertaining pop narratives of the last decade—genuinely interesting in its commitment, whatever you make of the politics behind it. But she isn’t the only one carrying the name.
Noah Cyrus was, at the time I spoke with her, sixteen and about to turn seventeen, already working social media the way her generation does—intuitively, strategically, without apparent effort. She’d voiced the English-language version of Ponyo, Miyazaki’s beautiful film about a fish-girl and a boy by the sea, and described it as her first real job in the industry. Her deeper education came from Billy Ray Cyrus, who took her on the road and taught her what music actually was before she understood it as a career. Then came Make Me (Cry) with Labrinth—a slow-building piece of emotional pop with more genuine restraint than most debut tracks manage—and suddenly the machine was warming up for her too.
I asked her about Snapchat because everyone was asking about Snapchat in 2016, and also because I genuinely didn’t understand it. I’d downloaded the app, watched a lifestyle blogger rhapsodize about her overpriced avocado toast, and nearly put the phone through a wall. Noah was patient with me. She had a private account for friends, she said, though that might shift once the album arrived. For actual fan connection she preferred Instagram. She’d turned off the comments there—not out of fragility, she was clear, but control. They can’t hurt me,
she said, with the flat certainty of someone who had made that decision a while back and moved on.
On Miley, she was consistently loyal without being defensive. When I pushed on her sister’s wilder years—the photos, the performances, the deliberate shedding of the Hannah Montana skin—Noah didn’t flinch. She did it out of conviction and confidence.
That was it. She sees Miley the way younger siblings do: not as a public figure but as family, the fixed center of something, which makes the world’s endless fascination with her feel slightly beside the point. Our bond is family,
she said. I asked if her own rebellious years would be as scandalous. She shook me off cleanly: We are different people, so we probably won’t do the same things.
And when I pushed for a hypothetical tabloid headline, she laughed it off: I’m not really the scandalous type. I do this because I love music.
She was most animated about Lady Gaga, whom she named as her idol without the hesitation young artists usually perform when asked. I genuinely love everything about her.
Her album of the year was Joanne—Gaga’s most stripped-back record, the one that made you work a little, not the obvious pick for a sixteen-year-old. If she could get onstage for a duet, she’d choose Rihanna. Loved her since she was small. Couldn’t quite process how good she was. That specific, unfiltered admiration was the most interesting thing about talking to her.
Her platform if she ran the world: ban zoos, ban the circus, do something real about animal rights. Her technology wish: flying cars. Her favorite show: American Horror Story. No cable at home. She would give up pizza over her phone, television over her phone, and—over a hypothetical hundred years—love over her phone, though she called that one out of control midway through and laughed. She knew she was addicted and didn’t seem particularly bothered by it. I guess I’d be happy without it,
she said about life offline, but somehow I’m kind of addicted to my phone.
In ten years, she told me, she’d still be making music, still putting out albums, still on tour. It was the least surprising answer she gave—and somehow the most convincing.