Billy Ray Bio

Billy Ray Cyrus and his fortune-making daughter Hannah Montana are a huge deal. If you're like me, you don't know much about who they really are, or what they've been through in this life. To edify that curiosity, I have compiled a time-line biography of the years that kind of matter so far.


1991: "Achy Breaky Heart" fills the void left behind when something people never asked for in the first place was gone. Billy Ray beats Stanley Cup champion Mario Lamieux in a mullet-off decided in a thrilling game 7. "Achy Breaky Heart" holds strong at Number One for weeks, bolstered by supporters who never want anything to change ever again.

1992: Still coasting on the “Achy Breaky Heart” success, and why the hell not? His backstage demands include “Some moonshine from one of them Virginias” and “some babes what got big hoots."

1993: Vacation time. Buys an island somewhere in the Caribbean, later loses the island in a high-stakes poker game. Still bitter about that poker game.

1994: Daughter Hannah (Cha-Ching!) Montana born. Her jackpot status has yet to be determined. Much to Billy Ray's disappointment, infant Hannah's rendition of "America, the Beautiful" is deemed "unprofitable" by his record company.

1995: Celebrity judge at the Kentucky State Fair's 42nd Annual Pie-Eat. Plus he buys a kick-ass riding lawnmower.

1996-1998: Records and then scraps several versions of his disastrous concept album: There's No House Like Roadhouse, a musical re-imagining of the Patrick Swayze film Roadhouse. The album's woeful sales prompt Billy Ray to sell off his two of his three favorite monster trucks.

1999: Receives an honorable mention at the Kentucky State Fair's 46th Annual Pie-Eat. Not content with a mere honorable mention, Billy Ray gets into a shouting match with celebrity judge Larry Flint. Billy Ray accuses Flint of crooked judgment, threatens to slash the tires on Flint's wheelchair, and tells the porn mogul he hopes a hurricane destroys his "fancy island" in the Caribbean.

2000: Soul-crushing year begins on a dreary note as the Apocalypse did not happen as some had foretold.

2001: Sues several "no-nothin'" televangelists who failed to deliver on promise of Y2K doomsday. Billy Ray loses the case. On the bright side, he remembers to feed his daughter on a regular basis.

2002: Entertains a crowd of dozens outside of the 49th Annual Kentucky State Fair. He is upstaged by his opening act: daughter Hannah Montana singing medley of popular Disney songs. A week later he's forced to see an optometrist since his pupils have literally transformed into dollar signs.

2003-2005: Works tirelessly 60 hours per week to make sure his daughter works 50 hours a week singing at shopping malls and filthy rich nursing homes.

2006-2009: Return to glory. Ready, set, don't call it a comeback! I would suggest that God is to Jesus as Billy Ray is to Hannah Montana if only it wasn't blasphemous to compare Jesus to a little girl.

It's worth noting that, although their hit-duet is irritating, Hannah's powerhouse vocals are impressive. She puts her daddy on her supple back and plows onward past screaming pre-teens toward an RV stuffed with One-Hundred Dollar Bills.

2010: Graciously thanks friends and strangers when they say, “Your daughter is lovely.”

2011: Starts to question his happiness, frets about Hannah's maturation. He becomes unsure of what to say when those same friends and strangers start saying, “Your daughter's vagina is lovely.”

2012-present: Belying his mainstream-pop persona, he secretly gets into dour alternative rock. He can be seen at Radiohead shows, stuck in a depressive trance, screaming but five words. “KARMA POLICE!” And afterward, “Play it again!”