Noah Cyrus continues to tease her forthcoming debut album, The Hardest Part, with a duet alongside Death Cab For Cutie’s Benjamin Gibbard titled ‘Every Beginning Ends,’ a spectacularly subtle and heart wrenching country ballad detailing the demise of a tired romance. Recorded in Seattle at Benjamin’s studio, their call-and-response details of a dwindling love further cements Cyrus as one of the best songwriters of her generation. Described as “one of the most pulverizing moments on the album” by Rolling Stone Magazine, Noah explains on this collaboration: “That was such a surreal experience. I’ve always been such a huge fan, so it was pretty daunting to get in the room with him, but once we got to work it all came very naturally.” She continues, “we talked about past relationships, failed relationships, our parents’ relationships, and relationships that have lasted forever. He told me his dad has a saying: ‘you have to wake up and choose to love someone every day,’ and it sparked this conversational song about the twilight of a Relationship and the reluctance to admit that something has run its course. I relate to that in many ways, not only with me, but also just with my parents’ relationship. Writing about that gave me more understanding.” 

 

On writing this song with Cyrus, Gibbard shared to Rolling Stone, “I kept coming back to it and just basking in her brilliance,” Gibbard says, comparing her writing style to his friend Jenny Lewis’. “It’s easy to be mysterious. It’s easy to be aloof. It’s easy to be cool. It’s so much harder to be earnest, and it’s so much harder because she’s really opening herself up with a lot of these songs.”