Miley has reflected on the final conversation she shared with her godmother, Dolly Parton, connecting it to an advance copy of her new album, Bass Persuades, and to the artistic guidance Parton offered throughout her life.

Speaking with Zane Lowe, Miley said Parton had long been the first person to receive a vinyl copy whenever she had one printed. That tradition was set to continue with the new record. Instead, Miley said their last conversation centered on telling Parton about the album and why their differences had always made their relationship work.

The discussion was not presented as a track-by-track breakdown of Bass Persuades. It was something more personal: an exchange between two performers whose public images can be deliberately heightened, but whose connection, in Miley’s account, rested on honesty.

“She is known for the fake, the hair, the makeup, and the show of it,” Miley said of Parton, before stressing that people respond to Parton’s authenticity. That apparent contrast—an openly theatrical exterior alongside an unmistakably real presence—is central to how Miley described Parton’s influence.

A persona does not have to erase the person

Miley tied that lesson directly to her own history with persona, including the way her life was shaped by Hannah Montana. She said there was a period when much of her life was about presentation, but Parton helped demonstrate that putting on a character, costume or public-facing identity does not necessarily make someone less genuine.

Miley even described aspects of her own presentation as “drag,” using the term to distinguish a performance self from the private person who, as she put it, feeds the tortoise every morning. Her point was not that one identity is a deception and the other is the only truth. Rather, both belong to the same individual. The amplified version may be switched on for an audience, but it still comes from the same person.

That is a useful distinction in pop music, where “persona” can be used loosely to mean everything from a stage wardrobe to an entire conceptual era. A persona is a crafted mode of expression: it can make certain emotions, images or ideas more visible. It is not automatically a lie. Miley’s comments suggest Parton offered a model for holding spectacle and sincerity together instead of treating them as opposing forces.

For an artist whose career has repeatedly involved navigating public expectations, that model carries practical weight. It allows a performer to embrace visual transformation and heightened showmanship without having to apologize for either. The question becomes whether the work retains a recognizable emotional core—not whether it avoids theatricality.

That tension between image and interiority has shaped other recent music conversations on the site, including the practical pressures around promotion and public narratives in the ongoing discussion around Nicki Minaj’s Pink Friday 2 promotion budget. Miley’s account, however, is more directly about mentorship: what it means to have a trusted person who understands the machinery of celebrity but still sees the person inside it.

Parton’s advice: make room for emotion, but finish the performance

One of the clearest memories Miley shared involved crying during performances. She said she cannot always stop herself from becoming emotional while singing, including during “End of the World.” Parton had watched her perform on Letterman and challenged her about why she was crying during a song about the world ending and never seeing her mother again.

The exchange was affectionate, but Parton’s underlying advice was direct. Music, she told Miley, is escapism. Let audiences cry, but get through the performance.

Escapism in this context does not mean that a song cannot be sad or that an artist must shut down their feelings. It means music can provide listeners a structured place to experience difficult feelings. Parton’s advice appears to draw a boundary between the performer’s responsibility to deliver the song and the audience’s freedom to react to it. The crowd can fall apart; the singer has to keep the song moving.

Miley’s response was equally revealing: she recognized the logic but said that becoming emotional is simply part of who she is. Crucially, she said Parton loved her for it despite their differing instincts about public emotion. The lesson, then, was not “be less sensitive.” It was to understand the discipline of performance while remaining known and accepted as a person who feels deeply.

That balance is a recurring challenge for singers. A performance can lose its shape if emotion makes it impossible to complete, yet excessive restraint can make a song feel remote. Miley’s recollection frames Parton as someone who advocated craft and composure without demanding emotional numbness.

Why the performances could make Miley cry

Miley said she cried while singing “I Will Always Love You” with Parton, and connected that moment to a broader fear: many of the people who have stabilized her are from older generations. She described them as having laid “brick by brick” the road she travels, while recognizing they would not always be there to call for advice.

Her comments give a different meaning to the tears Parton noticed. They were not only about the lyrics in front of her or the pressure of the stage. Miley described an awareness of time, lineage and the eventual absence of mentors. Performing alongside Parton could make that reality feel especially immediate.

She described Parton as someone she could ask, “What do I do now?” and said Parton was always right. The comparison Miley made was to the realization many people have about a parent: wisdom that seemed ordinary or questionable when you were younger can become strikingly clear with age.

There is no need to turn that recollection into a myth of flawless advice. What Miley emphasized was the role Parton played in her decision-making: a dependable source of perspective, someone whose experience carried trust. In creative careers, where outside opinions are plentiful and often self-interested, that kind of relationship can be unusually valuable.

It also explains why the album conversation mattered. Sending a finished vinyl is more than a delivery format; in Miley’s routine, it marked Parton as a first audience for her work. The record was not merely content awaiting release. It was something Miley wanted her godmother to hear first.

Bass Persuades and Max Martin’s push toward momentum

Miley also discussed the making of Bass Persuades, saying producer Max Martin helped steer the album toward a more upbeat, propulsive sound. “Propulsive” is often used in music to describe a rhythm or arrangement that creates strong forward motion—beats, bass and pacing that make a track feel as though it is continually driving ahead.

That approach was not Miley’s automatic choice for every song. She said some compositions began life as ballads, including “Aftermath,” which she wrote as a very sad song about a submarine. One lyric references “the Titan sinks.”

When Miley played the material for Martin and invited a brutally honest reaction, he singled out “Aftermath,” calling the original version boring. Miley said she had been pursuing a Thom Yorke-like atmosphere, but Martin proposed a different direction with an immediate rhythmic idea. Her reaction was that it improved the song.

The anecdote offers a compact look at producer-artist collaboration. A producer is not just a technician recording a vocal or arranging instruments; at times, the role includes challenging an artist’s first interpretation of a song. In this case, Miley brought the emotional premise and initial ballad treatment. Martin challenged the pacing and energy, arguing that the song’s potential lay elsewhere.

Neither position necessarily invalidates the other. A ballad usually prioritizes space, vocal expression and gradual development. A more energetic arrangement can change how the same lyric is felt, giving a heavy subject a pulse that pushes through sadness instead of lingering inside it. Miley’s account suggests Martin persuaded her that “Aftermath” needed that movement.

It is also notable that Miley asked for frank feedback. Creative collaboration can become unproductive when people only protect an early draft. Her description of the session presents criticism as useful because it was specific: Martin did not simply reject the song; he offered a concrete alternative, and Miley heard a result she considered better.

The two threads in Miley’s remarks—Parton’s counsel and Martin’s production note—meet at a similar creative principle. Both involve someone trusted telling her to move past an initial impulse. Parton urged her to get through a performance even when the feelings were overwhelming. Martin urged her to move “Aftermath” beyond its original, mournful ballad form.

But Miley’s reflections also make clear that receiving direction did not mean abandoning herself. She remains an artist who cries onstage. She still wrote “Aftermath” first as a sad ballad. The guidance mattered because it met an existing emotional instinct and helped give it structure, rather than erase it.

Bass Persuades was due at midnight Thursday night, and Miley’s account gives the release an unusually intimate frame. The album stands as new work shaped by an active creative partnership with Martin, but it also carries the memory of the conversation Miley said she last had with Parton: an album update shared with the person she always wanted to hear it first.