Miley Cyrus owes some of her success to Dolly Parton for checking up on her.
The singer, 32, made a bizarre admission in a recent appearance on Apple Music 1’s The Zane Lowe Show, revealing how she once lied to Parton, 79, to get away from embarrassment.
“She goes, ‘Alright, I see what you’re doing. Got any hits?’” she recalled in the Wednesday episode. “And I’m like, ‘I do actually.’ She goes, ‘Oh really? What’s it called?’”
The Grammy winner bluffed that moment by telling Parton she’d written a new song called More To Lose, but there was little truth to it.
“[I] had not written it yet. But I knew the title,” she said. “I was like, ‘I’ll send it to you.’ And she goes, ‘Well, you got any more?’ I was like, ‘Well…’”
However, the deadline gave the Flowers hitmaker a push to start working on it as she called up her songwriting partner Michael Pollack with an urgent request to get into the studio.
“I said, ‘We got to write this song.’ He goes, ‘Well let’s do it!’” she recalled. “He had a song that he had already started with another writer who I had never met [Autumn Rowe], and I had never heard any of it, but he goes, ‘It’s funny, I think some of this melody will work that I’ve been working on.’ And so I was like, ‘Well I don’t know, but I told her I’ll send it to her, so we’ve got to write this ASAP.’”
Cyrus was able to share the song with Parton after it was finally written by early January but the cycle of lying continued as Parton asked, “Got any more?” to which Cyrus bluffed again.
“I was like, ‘I do actually, and I think you’re really going to like the title.’ And meanwhile I’m going, ‘What titles do I have in my head?’ And I’m like, ‘I’ve got a song called Every Girl You’ve Ever Loved, and you’re going to love that,” Cyrus said.
“She goes, ‘Damn.’ She’s like, ‘I love that title, that should be your everything. You should have a makeup line, all these things.’ I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, no, I am, I’m working on it.’ I hadn’t even written the song yet, so all because of her did those two songs ever get created.”
Cyrus is set to release Something Beautiful—which contains both More to Lose and Every Girl You’ve Ever Loved—on May 30 along with an accompanying film.
