Billy Ray Cyrus Releases Statement After Disastrous Liberty Ball Performance: “That’s Called Rock & Roll!”

While everyone else is calling Billy Ray Cyrus’ performance at Donald Trump’s inauguration a train wreck, the country music singer is insisting that it was just “rock and roll.”

In case you missed it, the “Achy Breaky Heart” took the stage at the Liberty Ball yesterday. It certainly seemed like the singer was lip synching. How am I so sure? Well, he wasn’t even standing behind the mic at one point and “Old Town Road” was playing throughout the ballroom. Though the lip synching was probably the way to go… because his a cappella performance of “Achy Breaky Heart” was atrocious.

It seemed as though Billy Ray was battling technical difficulties with his equipment – among other things. At one point, the power to the stage was cut off, and some thought the producers were simply trying to get him to stop the show and leave. His guitar tech even came out and tried to help (and/or pull him off the stage), but had no success. Eventually, Jason Aldean come on played a little longer to fill time.

The train really got off the rails when Billy Ray Cyrus tried to break into his hit “Some Gave All.” The country music singer placed the microphone into the stand and… walked around on stage in the dark, waving his hands. Long story short, everything went about as bad as it possibly could have for Billy Ray Cyrus.

Here’s a clip from the performance for reference:

Billy Ray Cyrus gives up entirely at performing at the Liberty Inaugural Ball for Donald Trump and bizarrely wanders around the stage.

How embarrassing for him. pic.twitter.com/niPzHTeut8

— Art Candee 🍿🥤 (@ArtCandee) January 21, 2025

Sheesh.

A lot of people expected Billy Ray Cyrus to come out today with some sort of statement, apology, or explanation for the disastrous performance. And sure enough, the country music artist put out a statement in the form of a social media post. Though if you were looking for an apology or an explanation about what went wrong, Cyrus’ statement was far from it.

He instead chose to point out what went right, at least in his mind:

“I wouldn’t have missed the honor of playing this event whether my microphone, guitar and monitors worked or not. I was there because President Donald J. Trump invited me.

I had a ball at the Liberty Ball last night and I’ve learned through all these years when the producer says ‘you’re on,’ you go entertain the folks even if the equipment goes to hell. I was there for the people and we had a blast. That’s called rock and roll!”

Well… you can’t say that Billy Ray Cyrus doesn’t have self confidence! He apparently thinks that he overcame the technical difficulties and put on a rocking and rolling performance. When in reality, he looked like Rob Zombie and tried his best to use his “achy break voice” to power through it.

If I didn’t mention the Rob Zombie thing, I apologize. Cyrus first went viral yesterday when he posed for a picture with Senator Marsha Blackburn. We honestly should have seen the Liberty Ball disaster performance coming after this photo hit the internet, but hey, at least he was asked to be there for President Trump’s big day:

I’m here at the Capital One Arena with @billyraycyrus for the MAGA Victory Rally! pic.twitter.com/9k0Am7W2o0

— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) January 19, 2025

You can watch the full performance here, but… I’m not sure why anyone would want to: