Billy Ray Cyrus: 'That's still my Miley'

Worried about controversy? His daughter's behavior? Twerking?

Nah.

Billy Ray Cyrus told CNN's Piers Morgan on Thursday, "I'm a singer/songwriter and I'm her daddy. ... She's just Miley. She's an artist. She's real."

He added, "I think that what's happened over the years, Miley has been reinventing her sound. She's evolving as an artist herself. I think that all of what everyone is calling controversy now, that's still my Miley."

He wasn't surprised by her VMA performance. "I knew that she wanted to do something really special. Something that everybody was going to be talking about. I knew she had put in a great deal of practice and thought into what was going to happen in New York. ... Sometimes controversy lies in that special moment. I've never known any great artist that was lukewarm and the fans were just in the middle on. You either love it or hate it."

Music, he said, "is supposed to make you feel."

And, he said, "She coulda went out and sang the song in a flannel shirt and a pair of jeans and it still woulda been just as strong."

But would we still be talking about it almost a month later? "No way!"

He says Miley knows that to "come out of the shadows of Hannah Montana it takes something extremely drastic."