By Lucy Johnston
27-year-old country music artist Zach Lane Bryan is taking the world by storm. With his raw lyrics and stripped-back recording style, Bryan is quickly growing his fanbase and impacting how we listen to and define country music while encouraging other country and country-adjacent artists to experiment with their approach to writing.
Hailing from Oologah, Oklahoma, Bryan, who was still in the military at the time, began to record videos of his original music and post them on YouTube in 2017. While these recordings were never meant to be anything more than just him sharing what he’d written, to his surprise, his song “Heading South'' began to receive a lot of views and ended up going viral. Seeing how well it did on YouTube, he eventually released it onto streaming platforms in 2019, jump-starting his career in the music industry. A few months later, following the release of “Heading South,” Bryan released his first album, DeAnne, on August 24, 2019. The album was a dedication to his late mother, and with its twelve tracks, we were given our first taste of Bryans's simple yet thought-provoking style.
Continuing to create music, Bryan was slowly but surely building his fanbase, and with the release of American Heartbreak on May 20, 2022, Bryan was really making a name for himself. The song “Something in the Orange” gained attention from die-hard country music lovers and indifferent country music tolerators alike, and soon enough, within a month of the album's release, it had over 11 million streams. He has since released his self-titled album Zach Bryan on August 25th of this year, which managed to have all 16 tracks hit the Billboard Top 100 list, with the song “I Remember Everything” featuring country icon Kacey Musgraves landing at Number One.
While Bryan’s genre is typically categorized as country music, it’s extremely impressive the way he has managed to create such a specific style that appeals to so many listeners. With hints of indie, rock, and folk, even people who have claimed to hate country music their entire lives have had their interests peaked with his soulful and raw approach to writing. He appeals to both the older and the younger generations and has been able to show that country music doesn’t have to just stay in this one stereotypical space that it has become, but it can be stretched and shaped in such a way that pushes the limits past how we’ve come to define country music.
As one of the top names in country right now, Bryan is up there with many talented artists, but to put it simply, none of them are doing it quite like him. What makes Bryan’s music so unique is the way that he pours his heart and soul into every song he writes, not caring about how it will perform or how receptive people will be to it, not getting caught up in the production side of things, but instead just sitting down with his guitar and letting his thoughts and feelings spill out. By writing music like this, Bryan forces the listener to really feel, even if it’s not their own feelings that they are experiencing.
With his passionate yet relaxed approach to writing, Bryan is able to fill his songs with feelings of nostalgia, heartbreak, and hope. With every single song he writes, he manages to take us on a journey where we feel like we’re right there with him, sitting by the campfire on a cool fall night, listening to him play and sing about life, love, and everything in between.
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