Noah Cyrus spoke candidly with Apple Music’s Rebecca Judd today (May 19) about her new EP The End of Everything and its themes, including growing up in her sister Miley Cyrus‘ shadow.
The project’s fifth track, “Young & Sad,” delves into the younger Cyrus’ main struggles under the spotlight and the pressures to present herself, with a poignant second verse about her star sibling: “My sister’s like sunshine/ Always bringing good light/ Wherever she will go/ And I was born to rain clouds/ When they blew the flame out/ Blessed in our shadows.”
“I speak about my body dysmorphia and I speak about my struggles growing up as the world saw it as ‘Miley Cyrus’ little sister,’ Cyrus said in the Apple Music interview. “No one would choose to be called somebody else’s little sister and I used this…. So it’s like when you’re seeing somebody and you’re like, ‘Oh, you’re so and so’s brother, right?’ But you know who they are. You’ve been talking to them already. There’s a difference. It’s not, ‘I know you, but aren’t you also so and so’s little brother?’ It would be, ‘Your Miley Cyrus’ little sister. You’re Hannah Montana‘s little sister.'”
She continued: “It wouldn’t be a question, it’d be a statement when they came up to me. Hannah Montana came out in 2006 or 2007. So that up until I made my own name, which was the reasoning why. And it really stripped me of my identity as a little kid. And that’s what it felt like. Because it felt like no one gives a… about me, myself.”
Just last Friday (May 15), the 20-year-old artist broke down in tears during an Instagram Live Q&A session about The End of Everything. “I think just the message of the second verse, being born in the family I was in, everybody gave me such a hard time for having a hard time being Miley’s little sister,” Cyrus explained about “Young & Sad” at the time. “But I always felt like I was that person that no one gave a sh– about due to what people said to me online.”
