Cyrus gets ‘dang personal’

TORONTO – Billy Ray Cyrus sums up his new album in the true spirit of a country artist.

“It’s pretty dang personal,” the Kentucky native said of Change My Mind, which hits stores in Canada on Monday.

Of course, that’s nothing new. Several of his 13 studio releases have delved into his life, including 1992’s smash Some Gave All.

“But this is right up there, this is an extremely personal album,” Cyrus — wearing a cowboy hat, jean jacket and blue jeans — noted with his twang in a recent interview.

Cyrus, 51, said he was driven by “the pure love of making music” for Change My Mind.

“For me, as a songwriter, I’ll never paint the Mona Lisa, but I don’t have any desire to. I’m a simple guy from eastern Kentucky that writes about simple things, and I don’t really try to say it in a fancy way just because I don’t know that.”

On the first single, the banjo and fiddle infused countryrock title track, he croons about backtracking on a decision to leave a loved one.

The song seems to allude to Cyrus’s decision last year to withdraw his divorce filing and reconcile with his wife, Tish — a topic that a publicist warned was off-limits.

Tomorrow Became Yesterday and Good As Gone also touch on lost love, while the ballad That’s What Daddys Do (which is the spelling Cyrus went with on the liner notes) has him ruminating on his family— one of five in his career that have touched on fatherhood.