Country Crooner Billy Ray Cyrus Thinks His Third Album Will Give His Fans Everything They Expect

Billy Ray Cyrus had scored a good review, and he had the proof right in his hands.

“Well, it’s such a rare change,” said the man still best known for his international smash but highly ridiculed “Achy Breaky Heart” three years and two albums later. The hit took Cyrus to superstar status in a year, pushing sales of his debut album “Some Gave All” to more than 10 million.

The business this day was the promotion of his third album, “Storm in the Heartland.” Cyrus, his producers and lawyer, and “Achy Breaky Heart” writer Don Von Tress were grouped around a copy of the Nashville morning newspaper.

The Tennessean’s music writer had just made their day, writing:

“There’s nothing as huge here as ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ or ‘In The Heart of a Woman,’ but it’s a consistent, well-made album. And has anybody noticed the bashing is subsiding in many circles, in favor of empathy?”

That fits in fine with Cyrus’ soundbite for the new album.

“It has what feels to me like everything that everybody should need, want and expect out of a Billy Ray Cyrus album,” Cyrus said. “I don’t think there’s any holes.

“I think it has everything that my fans will expect, everything that radio will expect, everything that the young kids will expect.”

Well now - what might that be?

Start with novelty sing-alongs a la “Achy Breaky Heart” - “Deja Blue” and “Redneck Heaven.” Mix in a dollop of earnest message songs about the plight of farmers (“Storm in the Heartland”), abused and runaway children (“Enough is Enough” and “Patsy Come Home”) and American Indians (“Geronimo”).

And just to keep us off balance, Cyrus throws in a couple of heartfelt songs that reveal a little of himself, “I Ain’t Even Left” and “The Past.”

“I Ain’t Even Left,” written by Cyrus with Corky Holbrook and Joe Scaife, explores the singer’s dilemma of having a growing family and a job that frequently takes him far from home.

The 33-year-old Cyrus composed “The Past” in Amsterdam during a tour last year.

“I was looking over the canal and I seen a little boy over playing at a school, and all the other kids was gathered in one pile, and he was over by himself,” Cyrus said.

“It looked like maybe he was the poorest of the kids, maybe the roughest of the kids, and certainly a loner.

“He just kind of reminded me of myself. My life just flashed before me and I grabbed a piece of paper and wrote the song, just real fast.”

“Achy Breaky Heart” is mentioned in Cyrus’ new record company biography only in passing on the third page, but the singer is still proud of the part it played in the commercial explosion of country music.

He said country music also is reaping benefits from his tour in Australia two years ago, two trips to Europe and other successes in Africa.

“I know that they know regardless of what they say or what is said about Billy Ray Cyrus, that the truth is that this music opened up a lot of doors,” he said.

Cyrus has been known to break into a Led Zeppelin number on stage and thinks he has as much right to be embraced in Nashville as Garth Brooks, who had a hit with a Billy Joel song.

“I think that if country music wins, I win,” Cyrus said. “If I win, country music wins, and that’s the way relationships should be built on.”