Noah Cyrus Drops New Country Album Featuring Blake Shelton

In her career, Noah Cyrus is creating a new chapter by owning vulnerability and making her path in music. After experiencing depression and anxiety in her life, she now feels happier and hopeful for the future, using music as a means of healing and developing.

Cyrus had been and continues to deal with self-doubt throughout her career, often wondering what her own voice was and who she was. "A lot of my career has been the journey of finding myself again," the singer-songwriter says. She reflects on her childhood, sharing, "It was hard for me as a kid to trust in myself and my own identity and feel like that was enough," Cyrus, 25, tells PEOPLE. "But it is something that I think you just grow out of, and you grow with confidence. [Self-doubt] was something that I felt was put on me, that I then adopted and put on myself."

Her father, Billy Ray Cyrus, encouraged her to embrace her individuality. He told her “to be the outlaw, whatever that means to you, whether it's thinking there's no box and not making the music that people expect you to make and making the decisions that people say are right," Cyrus says, "or just living by your own rules like Waylon [Jennings] and Johnny [Cash]."

Now engaged to fashion designer Pinkus, she feels more grounded and secure, and she considers motherhood a top life goal. Music remains central to her life, with her recent July album, I Want My Loved Ones to Go with Me, earning critical acclaim. The album fuses the genres of country, folk, and Americana in a natural progression from her 2022 debut, The Hardest Part, and finally means she is able to go through a real journey of self-expression and development.

Her collaboration on "New Country" with Blake Shelton proves she is serious about paving out her own destination for a meaningful legacy, apart from her heritage with her last name. She will also have a fall tour following this release, and it will show her transition from pop experimentation to the Nashville sound. Most importantly, however, with her parents, Billy Ray and Tish Cyrus, both being in music, she is not just following in her parents' footsteps; she recognizes her familial lineage in music while creating her own station in country music.