For the first time in years, no one seems to be talking about Zach Bryan. All relationship drama aside, it’s like his fans and critics fell completely silent only weeks after the release of his album The Great American Bar Scene. Since 2019, all you have seen were TikToks and news articles about the vulnerable kid from Oklahoma who brought such a diverse fan group together with his heartfelt lyrics. In his prime, people considered Bryan a king of the alternative scene in country music. While he is still one of the most successful artists in the music industry today, the question, “Why did everyone stop talking about Zach Bryan?” lingers.
In the early moments of his career, Zach Bryan was in the Navy, suffering the loss of his mother. It’s widely known those actual experiences and other moments in his life led to albums like Deann and Elizabeth. In Quiet Heavy Dreams, Zach began showing off his storytelling chops in songs like “Crooked Teeth” and “Birmingham.” At this point, people weren’t pleading, “Every Zach Bryan song sounds the same,” yet. Respected by most, Bryan painted his lines with a sound that no one had ever heard. It wasn’t until around the summer of 2022 that the critique started to roll in.
Shortly after the release of his thirty-four-track album, American Heartbreak, obvious comparisons between his songs were made, one example being the nearly identical intros and melodies “Traveling Man” and “Darling.” Comments regarding his strumming and chord progressions argued that Zach’s sound often lacked variety, leading some listeners to view his catalog as increasingly redundant. Many have regarded American Heartbreak to be his best work. However, since the end of 2022, Bryan’s music has undergone drastic changes, with little chance of any two songs sounding too similar.
In 2023, just over a year since his last studio project, Zach Bryan released a self-titled album. This was surely his most experimental collection of works, straying away from the more country elements from his past projects and even comparing himself to a tourniquet. Some of the songs didn’t make a ton of sense or were sprinkled with unrelated lyrics, like “Overtime,” which begins with “Hey there, darling, won’t you love me down? I’m 51 miles out in interstate town” and then promptly turns into a song about no one believing in him, completely abandoning the opening lines and venturing into the land of self-deprecation. These changes led to a noticeable drop-off in Zach Bryan’s core fanbase, as many country listeners felt alienated by the more indie-inspired direction.
Whether the shift in Zach Bryan’s sound was driven by criticism or creativity, bringing his accomplishments into the conversation is not farfetched. Zach Bryan, who made songs like “Heading South,” had something to prove, but he’s no underdog anymore. When you hear Zach Bryan scream the choruses of “Burn, Burn, Burn” or “Ticking” at the top of his lungs, you’re not hearing the kid on the porch who loved to write songs. In 2025, there lives a new Zach Bryan, who refuses to embrace the style of music that fans latched onto in his early moments. Now you’re hearing a highly emotional country superstar with a cult following of millions upon millions of fans and an egomaniacal tendency to tweet the first thing that comes to his mind.
Zach Bryan isn’t exactly selling his soul to chase radio hits, but it’s clear he’s trying hard to stand out, a quality that initially set him apart. At the beginning of his career, Zach didn’t care what anybody thought. The Zach who wrote “68 Fastback” was bold and free-spirited. He was someone the world felt it needed, someone it still wanted. However, from an outside perspective, his need to be poetic and different is much stronger than his ability to know himself and please his audience. Between resisting “Pink Skies’s” placement on pop radio and repeatedly insisting that he isn’t a country artist, no one knows where Zach belongs.
Zach’s latest single releases, This World’s a Giant and High Road, garnered less attention and streams than any of his other single releases when, just two years ago, these may have gone on to be some of Zach’s most popular songs. This drop in popularity may have been avoided if Zach hadn’t paid so much attention to the voices of doubt he describes so profoundly in his music.
In the future, Bryan will surely release more and more work, which may reach even further in new musical and lyrical directions. The truth is that no one can tell you what that music will look like. With his Instagram comments disabled and seemingly distancing himself from criticism, it’s unclear if he truly understands what his fans want. Does Zach even know what he wants? In a moment where his popularity has waned, perhaps this is the perfect opportunity for Zach Bryan to reflect on who he truly is as an artist and create a project that is not just a response to external pressures but one he genuinely believes in. Only time will tell if he can reconnect with the original audience that once saw him as a trailblazer or if he will continue down an ever-evolving path of reinvention.
