Who Wrote Billy Ray Cyrus’ “Achy Breaky Heart”?

You can tell the world you never was my girl / You can burn my clothes when I’m gone / Or you can tell your friends just what a fool I’ve been / And laugh and joke about me on the phone, Billy Ray Cyrus sings desperately in his signature debut hit, “Achy Breaky Heart.”

In the song, he sings that you can tell his arms, feet, lips, and fingertips goodbye, just don’t let his achy breaky heart know the truth. The tune “Achy Breaky Heart” cemented Cyrus’ breakout in 1992, becoming his definitive classic and enduring to this day. However, a different fate was intended for this country tune.

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Who Wrote It?

The song was written in 1990 by a hobbyist songwriter, Don Von Tress. “I started the song in my sister’s basement,” he told Billboard‘s Country Corner in 1992. “My wife had given me a new amplifier for my birthday and I was just fooling around on the guitar and a drum machine.”

When it was identified as a potential hit, the song was initially meant for the Oak Ridge Boys. They declined to record it, however, after the group’s lead singer reportedly spurned the phrase, “achy breaky.”

The song was eventually recorded by the Marcy Brothers in 1991, originally released under the title, “Don’t Tell My Heart.” When Cyrus released the song on his 1992 debut album, Some Gave All, it caught on like an achy breaky wildfire, sparking a line dance craze, and making Cyrus a household name.

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The song soon became a crossover hit under Cyrus’ tutelage, venturing into Top 40 radio and becoming somewhat of a controversy. Country purists believed the song to be a desecration of the genre, for others it was a bop. It certainly marked a shift from tradition and was a catalyst for the pop country that reigns today.

Von Tress never had a song recorded by a major label artist until “Achy Breaky Heart” and few would follow after its success. However, Cyrus and Von Tress worked together to pen Cyrus’ song “When I’m Gone” in 1993.

Photo by Ebet Roberts/Redferns