Billy Ray on Miley's "Vanity Fair" Cover: "Stuff Happens"

Billy Ray Cyrus photo courtesy of Walt Disney Records.

June 18, 2008 — When Miley Cyrus appeared on the cover of "Vanity Fair" in a blanket that revealed her shoulders and upper back, lots of pundits raised a ruckus over the shot, saying it was too suggestive for a girl who’d only recently turned 15.

Billy Ray shrugged it off yesterday during an appearance on NBC’s "Today" show, saying that "stuff happens."

"I didn’t know they were going to strip her down and wrap her in a blanket," he said. He added that he was "surprised when I saw it," but seemed to take it in stride: "That’s life. Stuff happens."

Remembering advice he had received earlier in his career, Billy Ray said he counseled Miley once the controversy erupted to "let it run its course." She apologized for the picture, which was taken by noted celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz, who started the session by shooting pictures of both Billy Ray and Miley. He left the photo session after he was done and has been criticized publicly for not remaining present the entire shoot. But he indicated that simply wasn’t possible because of his travel schedule.

"I didn’t have any choice," he explained. "I had a show to do, and an obligation, to go to Washington state," where he was to play the day after the shoot for troops who had just returned from Iraq.

Billy Ray admitted that he did not protest the pictures when he saw what Vanity Fair planned to run, but he didn’t believe anything positive would come of it.

"My dad," he noted, "always said, ‘The more you stomp in poop, the more it stinks.’"

Billy Ray gave that same quote, worded slightly differently, in 1992 when he explained why he laid low after receiving public criticism from Travis Tritt.

Billy Ray and Miley are both slated to appear next year in Hannah Montana: The Movie, filmed recently in Tennessee. Among the other acts who will appear in the picture are Rascal Flatts, Taylor Swift and Bucky Covington.