In 2024, Billy Ray Cyrus was hospitalized with a life-threatening infection and told to prepare for the worst.
The country legend beat the odds and is now speaking out for the first time about the near-fatal experience he says only a “miracle” could explain.
In People magazine’s cover story this week, Cyrus detailed his bout with sepsis that nearly cost him his life.
Answered prayer
Cyrus didn’t have an explanation for how the sepsis developed — only that it was his “worst nightmare.”
Making the experience even harder was where it was happening. “Two years before that, my mom had died in that hospital, in the very floor that I was on,” the country singer said. Cyrus lost his mother, Ruth Ann, in 2022.
His entire body was “swollen,” he noted, and his doctors told him to get his “affairs in order.” Somehow, he made a full recovery that his medical team couldn’t fully explain. “I had a prayer answered,” he recalled. “That’s a miracle.”
Noah’s song
The sepsis was only part of it.
Cyrus was also diagnosed with vocal paralysis and didn’t know if he’d ever get his voice back. A song by his daughter Noah gave him the push he needed to keep trying.
“Noah’s got that one song, ‘Don’t Put It All on Me,’ that honestly saved my life,” he said. Written by his son Braison, Noah sings on the track, “Some days, we might fall apart / But we’re never broken.”
Cyrus said it was the only thing that got him through when things were at their worst.
‘Try again’
He also credited the family’s youngest, Braison’s 5-year-old son Bear, with helping guide him toward a better place.
“In this very broken moment of my life, my little grandson Bear looked at me and said, ‘Try again.’ And up until that moment, he had never spoken to me at all,” he recalled.
“I wasn’t even sure if he knew my name. In that moment I thought, ‘He’s telling you something.’ Is it about love? Music? Somehow, I got to try again at both. So I’m learning to try again.”
Happy place
Cyrus also said his girlfriend, actress Elizabeth Hurley, refused to let him give up on his voice. The two have been together for about a year.
“Elizabeth would say to me, ‘Do you understand your voice is coming back?’ She encouraged me to the point where she had me do The Masked Singer,” he said, referring to the show’s 14th season, which aired in February.
“She said, ‘You need to do it to challenge yourself.’ And I thought, God, why is she so smart?”
Now, with his first new album in 14 years, The Hill, on the way, Cyrus said he has “finally found this wonderful place where I’m happy.”
“I’m singing — I’ve been singing every day. I feel so good about my voice,” he added. “This might be one of the better moments.”
