Braison Cyrus On Finding His Sound With New Single, “Know This”

Braison Cyrus is giving himself time for his moment.

The 31-year-old singer-songwriter has been working hard to clearly define the sound and genre that he’d like to share with the world. Though he’s proud of the music he’s created before – his 2021 album, Javelina, was a culmination of all the things he loved – Cyrus realized he needed to focus on one element of who he is.

“What I’ve done in the past was everything I liked,” Cyrus says over Zoom from his home in Nashville, Tennessee. “I love everything I’ve done, but one thing that I’ve learned is that rather than doing [all the sounds and styles that] I like, I want to do one thing and do it really well.”

His new single, “Know This,” which features his sister, Grammy-winning singer Miley Cyrus, is out now, marking a new era of music for Braison Cyrus. It also marks the first time Cyrus is working with his big sister.

Below, Cyrus discusses how the single came about, what the song means to him, working with Miley, what kind of music he wants to create, and his future plans.

Laura Sirikul: Tell me about the single, “Know This.” How did this song come about?

Braison Cyrus: Once I decided this collection of songs would become an album, I had a lot of people tell me that I needed something with more energy. So I got together with a songwriter friend of mine named Jordan Lindley, and we were like, “Let’s make it so over the top and fun.” I usually focus on lyrics first and foremost. But, for this song, it was more, “let’s make it upbeat and fun.” We did it in about an hour, which is my preferred time to write a song because it means that I wasn’t thinking about the lyrics as much. I wasn’t trying to focus on that. I was just trying to focus on bringing something that had a lot of energy.

I mean, the lyrics are pretty meaningful: “I’m making up new reasons in my mind, but I’m already gone.” What is the meaning behind the song to you?

I went back and changed [the lyrics] because we were just singing the same line over and over again in the chorus. Then we went back later, once we had the right kind of energy dialed in, and tailored the lyrics to fit. We had the energy of it first, then we went back and said, “Okay, now let’s try actually to dive in and make something.”

My family grew up in the area south of Nashville, known as Franklin. It’s gotten a lot bigger over the years, but it was relatively small and south of Nashville. We moved to Los Angeles when I was about to start high school. I would say, especially with the chorus, it was kind of about LA. The verses are, weirdly enough, about Franklin. It was a mix of leaving Franklin to move to LA, then leaving LA to move back to Nashville. The verses were more about my hometown, whereas the chorus felt more like it was about LA.

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurasirikul/2025/09/05/braison-cyrus-on-finding-his-sound-with-new-single-know-this/