Billy Ray Cyrus And Cheap Trick Bring The House Down With Rockin’ CMT Awards Performance
on Jun 08, 2016
For Billy Ray Cyrus, performing with Cheap Trick is a dream come true. They are some of his musical heroes and to share the stage with them is an honor.
“I’ve been a big Cheap Trick fan for a long time,” he said on the Today Show while announcing their performance.
He stayed mum on which songs they would be performing, but he hinted at “Don’t Be Cruel” because the “Elvis thing kind of fits in“.
What he means by that, is that in his upcoming CMT show Still The King, he plays an Elvis Presley impersonator named Burnin’ Vernon Brown.
As an Elvis fan his whole life, the role came naturally to him, so singing Presley’s 1956 hit “Don’t Be Cruel”, which Cheap Trick covered in 1988, was a no-brainer.
Cyrus started the performance singing a solo rendition of “Don’t Be Cruel” and the crowd went wild!
Cheap Trick joined him for a rockin’ version of their 1978 mega-hit “Surrender” and yes, lead singer Robin Zander wore his signature beige top hat!
They traded off lines in the verse and teamed up for the chorus. The camera panned to the audience, who were all singing along.
Cyrus got in the rocker spirit and hit some extremely long, high notes that blew us away!
Make sure you tune into the June 12th premiere of Still the King and watch the full trailer here.
Watch the awesome performance below!
