There’s an episode in Malcom Gladwell’s podcast Revisionist History where he explores the emotional pull country music has on its listeners and why it makes them cry. In it, Gladwell speaks about lyric specificity, hometown nostalgia, and the human experience that’s captured in distinctive storytelling. While I appreciate the genre and Gladwell’s take, country has never brought me to tears. That was until Zach Bryan made me cry.
The 27-year old navy veteran has taken the song and album charts by storm with his new self titled album spending most of September atop the Billboard Top 100. Not to be confused with Luke Bryan, Zach’s approach to the genre veers far from the mainstream sounds of bro or pop country with something akin to an older time.
Storytelling is king for the gritty Oklahoman native as he provides outlets for his listeners (and himself) to process the world and our place in it. The clarity in which Bryan writes his songs strengthens the bonds between musician and listener. When he sings about his hometown in Oklahoman Son, I’m transplanted to mine in Western Pennsylvania. Lines like “you can’t hide where you’re from / night crawler blood on your casting thumb / I’ll always be an Oklahoman son” cause me to consider the marks and habits I carry from my upbringing. The commonality isn’t because fishing was a staple of my childhood, but his careful word selection transplants me to the feels, sounds, and smells that now only live in my memory. His lyrics put into words where I once only had feelings.
This is on full display throughout the album and is particularly poignant when Bryan shares about his losses. On El Dorado, Bryan laments the death of a friend and the gaping hole it left in the community of El Dorado, Kansas. With sadness in his wail, Bryan belts “El Dorado, hell if they know the difference in a hero / And a man I wish was still by my side.” With the strings accompanying Bryan’s lament, and the bass line thumping, Bryan provides a space for you to wail with him. Whether it’s joining Bryan in his sorrow or singing from your own experience, the act itself feels defiant. Almost as if singing at the top of your lungs lessens sorrow’s grip.
Woven into Bryan’s sprawling album is a self reflection as deep as it is wide. On Fear and Fridays, Zach admits his bent towards poor decisions when desire is involved: “There’s a house hoppin’ on the edge of town / I’m revved up, thirsty, and ready to drown.” And in the song’s chorus, we find that under his desire to drink is a fractured relationship that Bryan fears losing: “I got a fear, dear, that it’s gonna end / Won’t you get angry at me, say you love me again? / I got a fear dear, that it’s a Friday spark / You only love me like you mean it when it’s after dark.”
Often seen as the finish line to a busy week, Bryan uses Fridays as a vehicle to explore longing and the trouble we experience when it eludes our grasp. And, the pain it can cause others and ourselves in our pursuit of it. On Bryan’s first track Fear and Friday’s (Poem), he rasps the refrain “And I think fear and Fridays got an awful lot in common, they’re overdone and glorified and always leave you wantin’.”
While Bryan sings literally about the regret of drinking too much and the high hopes that crash down on Saturday morning, Friday is a placeholder for the ideals we chase after. That could be the weekend but also can come in the form of our dream job, a mending of a severed relationship, a slower way of life, or relief from the chronic pain that creaks in our bones. In the breakneck pace of the digital age, I relish in Bryan’s nostalgic bent for a simpler time on tracks like Tradesman: “So if you wanna trade, I’d say it’s a hard earned mile / Wanna sweat likе hell, throw a hammer down / And know the old feelin’ of a fivе o’clock smile.
But with these desires come our human bent to distort them. While Bryan pines for a simpler time, he admits (confesses?) the conflict of interest in his commitment to his burgeoning music career and the dedication and sacrifice it is for him and his loved ones. I’m deeply grateful for what his pursuit has meant for the music industry and for my listening ears, but Bryan himself acknowledges the repercussions. On Hey Driver he sings “Hey, driver, I’ve been ridin’ / This lonely way too long / All the love I’ve had worth givin’ / Was all spent on my songs.” And on Ticking, Bryan mourns a relationship that was severed, in part, because of his life as a musician: “I’m cuttin’ ties with things that bind my heart to this world / I love you and I’m willin’ but I cannot keep you, girl. Philly by the morning and Ohio by the night / The thing about a long rope is you can’t hold on too tight.”
Bryan locates this constant push and pull of desire within a framework of fragility. His songs often beg the question; what are we to do with our wounds? On Tourniquet, Bryan sees no other option but to draw close and tend to the aching and injured: “I bandage up your body and your bones and your bad days too / Take care of the blood that your love runs through.” And far from the hero, Bryan finds himself in line to see the medic. With the help of Lumineers frontman Wesley Shultz, he offers a diagnosis on Spotless: “I ain’t spotless, neither is you / For once in my life, I’m gonna see it through / If you want spotless, I’ll always losе / I don’t want love, lover, I want the truth.”
Bryan’s choice to have Spotless follow Tourniquet on the album feels intentional. Like there is something intrinsically tied to the wounds we endure and cause and the waywardness we’re prone to. As if the two interpret one another. In fact, the whole album feels that way; that somehow our desire and distortion of love dovetails into our search for meaning and our longing for home. And I think with that sentiment so clearly articulated, coupled with Bryan’s generational voice, is the reason he’s on repeat right now. It’s the reason country music is now making me cry.
In the quiet space right after the album’s end and just before it repeats again, I can’t help but think an extraction of sorts has taken place. That a collection of songs and poems has provided a means to bring to the surface what’s previously laid in the depths. And among the debris of loss and longing, hometowns and heartbreaks, there is also a hope that, in time, pieces all things together. That for all of the turmoil of our Friday longings, Sunday is coming. Still nursing the hangover of that Good Friday, I think of a bedraggled Mary limping towards the tomb of her dead Jesus. But instead finds him among the lilies as the Gardner he’s always been. The sun rising somewhere on the east side of sorrow, as Jesus calls us by name.
