Known for the 2016 hit “Make Me (Cry),” Noah Cyrus released her second studio album, “I Want My Loved Ones to Go with Me,” on Friday. Following her debut album in 2022, this new 11-track release dives deeper into her familial Nashville roots. The album ties together love and loss, creating must-listen tracks that empower listeners to be in touch with their grief.
Music runs through Noah Cyrus’ lineage because she grew up in a musical family with Miley Cyrus and Billy Ray Cyrus, Noah said in an Instagram post. In “New Country,” featuring Blake Shelton, Cyrus seems to be referencing the experience of navigating her music career without her grandfather, Ron Cyrus, to whom she dedicated the album. Cyrus and Shelton sing together during the climax of the song, creating an extended metaphor for the realizations of adulthood and loss: “This is learning how to live and not just stay alive / This is high stakes you might lose / But when you know there’s nothing to go back to / Then you have to find new country.”
After releasing three songs as singles before the album’s debut, hints of folk music shone through with themes of heartbreak and coming-of-age realizations. In “Way of the World,” featuring Ella Langley, these themes flow through every line of the song. Langley and Cyrus sing, “As you’re growing up / You get faced with the truth / That your parents are people / And messed up like you.” This could be referring to Billy Ray Cyrus, her father, and his most recent domestic abuse allegations. The chorus sings, “That’s just the way that it works / The way of the world,” reflecting themes of maturing realization.
Cyrus has given her audience an album to cry to because its genuine themes mirror the heart of the album. Folk music is meant to elicit deep emotions or preserve a culture’s history and knowledge. With this in mind, Cyrus preserves the history and knowledge of her grandfather and lineage with songs that maintain a country feel with folk instruments like the fiddle and the banjo.
Written by her great-grandfather and sung by her grandfather, “Apple Tree” falls about halfway through the record and keeps her grandfather’s spirit alive. At four minutes and ten seconds into the song, Cyrus features a recording of her “pappy” singing the track alongside her. Themes of heartbreak and loss flow through this song and create a safe space for those who have lost loved ones.
“I Want My Loved Ones to Go with Me” speaks volumes on the experience of losing loved ones and reflects the painful experience of grief. Cyrus brings out her inner folk musician through themes of loss. This album fills a hole meant for sadness with yearning and wishfulness.
4 apples out of 5
