formerly known as

Billy Ray Cyrus Becomes the ‘Artist Formerly Known As Billy Ray’ With Name Change

The artist formerly known as Billy Ray. Photo: Michael Loccisano/Getty Images

Like Beyoncé, Oprah, and multifarious figures of renown before him, Billy Ray Cyrus now believes his celebrity needs but a single name. The country singer has announced that he is reducing his number of designations by two and will hereon be known solely as Cyrus. As Cyrus (see how well that worked?) explained to Rolling Stone, “I always went by Cyrus, and I begged Mercury Records to call me Cyrus in the beginning because that’s what I was comfortable with. I’m going to the hospital where I was born in Bellefonte, Kentucky, and legally changing my name.â€

While this is frankly a wild thing to do, given that any number of Cyrus’s immediate family are famous enough to eat away at his SEO, you can treat that achy, breaky heart with an antacid for the time being, because the name change isn’t immediate. We have until August 25 to adjust to a new world order, at which point “I will be the artist formerly known as Billy Ray,†still-Billy-Ray-for-now says. Looks like we now know who gave his daughter that advice about “just being Miley.â€

Billy Ray Cyrus Is Just Cyrus Now