Firerose is sharing her version of life inside her marriage to Billy Ray Cyrus, and the picture she paints is isolating. The 37-year-old singer says that during their seven-month marriage she was living on his Tennessee farm with no car, needing permission to text, meet friends, attend church, or record her own solo music. She summed it up in one phrase:“I call it farm prison.”
The situation is complicated, and both sides have said things the other denies. Billy Ray, 65, has previously claimed Firerose blocked his daughters from contacting him, while Firerose says she was groomed beginning at 22 and has been fighting what she calls a smear campaign. The divorce was finalized in August 2024 after their split played out very publicly. Since then, Billy Ray has reconciled with his children and is dating actress Elizabeth Hurley.
Now Firerose is responding the way a musician does, with new music. Her single“Phoenix”is about the relationship, and it comes with a video directed by Chris Applebaum. In her words,“I wouldn’t trade having my voice back for anything.”Beyond the celebrity headlines, what she describes, isolation, monitoring, permission to do ordinary things, is a pattern experts call coercive control. Do you think entertainment stories like this help people recognize those dynamics, or do they get lost in the drama? Sound off in the comments.
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Local Lawton
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