November 24, 2008

Miley Cyrus To Follow In Dad Billy Ray's Country Footsteps?

By Shawn Adler (MTV.com)

Miley Cyrus' platinum-selling second studio album, appropriately titled Breakout, was the 15-year-old artist's first recording not to have any official affiliation with her insanely popular character Hannah Montana - in name at least if not in spirit, since so many of the songs could still be best classified as "bubblegum" or teen-pop.

But, while Cyrus remains indefinitely attached to the Hannah Montana TV show, she seems readier than ever to abandon the character's trademark sound, revealing to MTV News that one of her biggest goals is to release a full-on country album.

"I would love to," she said of the prospect of releasing a record of country-music songs. "That's something I would want to do."

Despite being the daughter of chart-topping country-music star Billy Ray Cyrus, Miley has only occasionally dabbled in the sound that made her old man famous, collaborating with Nashville Star judge Jeffrey Steele, for instance, on a song for the new movie Bolt, which Cyrus described to MTV as having a "country twang."

For her first country-music album, though, Cyrus thinks she'd call in the big guns - no, the really big guns.

"I would love to work with Dolly [Parton]. If I would do anything, I would want to collaborate with her," Cyrus said of the legendary country star who, as luck would have it, doubles as her godmother. "I would love to do something, at one point, if I get to go back to Nashville. I would love to work with her again 'cause she's just fabulous. She's always so done-up. I think that'd be fun to work with someone as legendary as she is."