Following her recent single, featuring Il Divo and Lara Fabian, “Oh What a Dream We Had,” and “Porcupine Tattoo,” featuring Bill Callahan and XL Recordings’ Richard Russell, Noah Cyrus has returned with another collaboration, “Don’t Put It All on Me,” a duet with Fleet Foxes‘ Robin Peknold.
Written by Cyrus’ older brother Braison, the piano ballad centers around blame, regrets, and rawer heartbreak—Some days, we might fall apart / But we’re never broken / The words that were spoken / Mean nothing to me / By the look in your eye / I can tell that you no longer need me / The feeling is freeing / Don’t put it all on me.
“I have always been the observer in our family,” said Cyrus in a statement, “and Braison wrote about how I tend to carry the weight of that on my shoulders.”
Also a singer-songwriter, Braison started releasing his own music in 2020, including the singles “Glass Between Us,” “Heart is Gold,” and “Across the Plains,” following by his 2021 debut album Javelina. In 2024, Braison also released the single “I’ll Never Leave You.”
Directed by Luis Villanueva, and written by Cyrus and Rudy Grazzini, the music video takes the song on a fairytale-like journey with more mystical scenes of Cyrus in a cave, walking and running through the dark forest, glimpses of a white horse, and the sun peeking through, hinting at the light on the other side of the darkness.
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“Don’t Put It All on Me” also marks a new beginning for Cyrus, of coming to terms with her past and living more fully in the present. “I want my music to offer fans a sense of comforting, peaceful nostalgia,” said Cyrus. “That’s something that I feel so heavily when I listen to music.”
Cyrus continued, “We all want to connect with our past while also being aware of the present moment. Music does that for me, and this new collection of songs was made with that in mind. I want to evoke that feeling of a comforting friend that a song can be, and allow us all to heal.”
The song follows a string of singles Cyrus has released since her second album The Hardest Part in 2022 and her 2021 EP People Don’t Change. Along with Peknold, Noah collaborated with her sister Miley on the 2020 song “I Got So High That I Saw Jesus” from her debut EP The End of Everything. Cyrus has also collaborated with Death Cab For Cutie’s Ben Gibbard, Vance Joy, Leon Bridges, Winona Oak, and PJ Harding, among others.
Since her debut, Cyrus starred in the FX series American Horror Stories and was nominated for a Best New Artist Grammy in 2020.
Photo: Noah Cyrus (l) by Hanna de Vries and Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold by Shervin Lainez
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