Song of the Week: Is This Zach Bryan’s Redemption Era?

Car’s still in the shop. Life’s cold. You know what else is cold? The sentiment on the new Zach Bryan album. I wanted to talk today about a song on it called “Appetite.” Zach Bryan has had a real run in the last six years. Really one of the breakout stars of the 2020s. And he’s done so in this very stubborn way. Not a lot of public facing appearances outside of his shows. No real engagement with radio. So Zach Bryan’s music lands somewhere near the intersection of what you might think of as American roots music, maybe even a little bit of emo, some Springsteen and country, even though that’s a genre that he chooses consciously not to caucus with. So this album doesn’t veer too far musically from prior Zach Bryan projects, but you do sense a shift in the lyrics. There’s stuff here about alcohol addiction, about letting yourself down, and also what happens when you come out the other side of a really dark period. For someone who has rejected the spotlight as assiduously as Zach Bryan has he’s had an uncommonly public last couple of years. Frisky tweets and deletes, sparring with other musicians and a romantic life that’s become tabloid fodder. Things seem to have taken a turn. He announced that he’s become sober and he recently got married. And so “With Heaven on Top” is a diary of that era of failure, recovery and reflection. It’s one thing to be sad and frustrated about all the horrors of that the world that has visited upon you. It’s a whole other thing to be sad about the horrors that you visited upon yourself.