Zach Bryan

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  • Zach Bryan
    Zach Bryan
    Zach Bryan

    Zach Bryan has very quickly achieved Ubiquitous Pop-Mythology Origin Story status. The Oklahoma singer-songwriter’s trajectory, from Navy cadet with a preternatural talent for storytelling and a YouTube following to honourable dischargee with a massive grassroots following to, now, major-label superstar selling out 100 or so arenas a year, was both dizzyingly fast and seemingly preordained. His self-titled follow-up to 2022’s triple-LP Warners debut American Heartbreak doesn’t necessarily advance Bryan’s story or status so much as cement it, moving past the introduction phase into something more permanent and more meaningful. One way or another, Zach Bryan—and Zach Bryan—is going to be with us for a while. The album—a lean 16 tracks compared to Heartbreak’s 34—begins with a double-barrel mission statement. The first is the spoken-word opening track, “Fear and Friday’s (Poem),” which distills Bryan’s everyman charm and philosophy into a benediction (“I think fear and Fridays got an awful lot in common/They are overdone and glorified and always leave you wanting”). This is followed immediately by a Hendrixesque “Star-Spangled Banner” guitar lick and the shout-along bravado of “Overtime,” complete with horn section and empowered nods to his aforementioned mythology: “They said I's a wannabe cowboy from a cutthroat town/With tattooed skin and nobody around/Your songs sound the same, you'll never make a name for yourself.” Bryan’s three-year whirlwind of making a name for himself has only sharpened his eye for detail—the songs only sound the same in that they all share this quality. A slick turn of phrase like “If you need a tourniquet or if you want to turn and quit/Know that I'll be by your side” is delivered like someone who knows what he's doing. The songs comfortably inhabit traditional country, Americana, and, on relative barn burners like the veteran’s tale “East Side of Sorrow” and “Jake’s Piano - Long Island,” at least one boot in Springsteen-anthem story-song terrain. And at a moment when country music, possibly more than any other genre, is roiled by reactionary entrenchment in the face of long-overdue advancement, Bryan has managed to stake himself to the centre without alienating anyone or, chiefly, himself. He preaches love and tolerance and sings about hard drinking and ’88 Fords, and they don’t sound like opposing energies, because why should they? He goes toe-to-toe with Nashville-outsider kindred spirit Kacey Musgraves on “I Remember Everything,” and even the most intimate songs, like the solo acoustic closer “Oklahoman Son,” sound built for the back row, which gets further away each tour leg. The sum of these parts is nothing less than a confident, headstrong star turn from someone who seems a little ambivalent about stardom, at least on any terms other than his own.

  • American Heartbreak
    American Heartbreak
    American Heartbreak

    Country music has a long-held tradition of narrative music, though the commercial side of the genre has strayed away from such character- and story-driven songs in recent years. Zach Bryan is here to change that, though, on his sprawling, ambitious triple album American Heartbreak. Across 34 tracks, the Navy veteran and cult favourite envisions bull riders, long-lost lovers, wandering road warriors, and more, telling their stories over simple arrangements and with an emotionally potent voice that recalls Tyler Childers or early Jason Isbell. “There's plenty of characters on American Heartbreak—some of them I know, some of them I don't,” Bryan tells Apple Music. “Sometimes I'm just in a breakfast place and I see someone doing something and I'm like, ‘It'd be crazy if that person was a bull rider.’ And then I'm like, ‘Oh wait—that would be a cool story.’” Album highlights include the massively successful “Something in the Orange,” which crackles with brooding intrigue, and “From Austin,” a heartbreak song that avoids the tropes and clichés of similar country tracks in favour of more poetic lines like “Babe, I’ve gotta heal myself from the things I’ve never felt.”

  • DeAnn
    DeAnn
    DeAnn

    The Oklahoma singer-songwriter arrives—while still on active duty in the Navy.

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About Zach Bryan

With his sparse, impassioned country music, Zach Bryan is a 21st-century torch holder for three chords and the truth. Born in Japan to U.S. Navy parents in 1996, he grew up in Oologah, OK, and started writing songs as a teenager that were steeped in the diverse Red-Dirt music traditions of his home state. On leave from his own Navy service in Florida, he recorded his 2019 debut, DeAnn, named after his late mother, and established himself as a poignant lyricist and powerful singer. Two years later, those gifts earned him his Grand Ole Opry debut, a swift rise buoyed by resonant songs about love and loss that eschew country-radio tropes to view life through a clear lens. “I believe the best songs are written after the best living’s done,” Bryan told Apple Music about his 2022 triple album, American Heartbreak. It’s clear from Bryan’s body of work that he’s already lived plenty; judging from how prolific he is, he has a lot of living left to do, too.

FROM
Okinawa, Japan
BORN
April 2, 1996
GENRE
Country

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