Trace Cyrus writes post-inauguration open letter to father Billy Ray: "You're not healthy"

It’s safe to say that this week’s Liberty Inaugural Ball was the first time that most people had seen much of country musician Billy Ray Cyrus in at least a couple of years. Although he’d been clinging to some semblance of mild relevance for a while almost entirely on the strength of the career of his daughter, Miley Cyrus—and then the brief resurgence he got when he latched onto the phenomenon that was Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road”—the elder Cyrus hasn’t released a new album in six years, and the tour date section of his web site is entirely fallow. His performance at the ball might have come off as pretty shocking for many people, then: Standing alone on the stage, Cyrus didn’t perform so much as he mostly mumbled along to the music video of “Old Town Road” playing behind him while listlessly strumming a guitar, and then, after technical problems, attempted to deliver an a capella version of “Achy Breaky Heart” that was somehow even worse. (He referenced Carrie Underwood’s similar struggles, but we’ll say this: 2025 Billy Ray Cyrus is no Carrie Underwood.) It was a performance that genuinely tipped over from “This is pretty bad” into “Hey, this is actively worrisome” territory.