The SEC Cocteau Twins and the Ivy League Toby Keith

Zach Bryan is positioned on a stage in the middle of North Charleston Coliseum, adorned not with lasers or pyrotechnics, but with arrays of white LED string lights, so as to look like the most annoying person from your college orientation group somehow gained access to a 13,000 seat arena. The humble “Coliseum” blasts cold air, a symptom of its intended purpose as the home of 3-time East Coast Hockey League champions, the South Carolina Stingrays. The hockey air smells of stale popcorn and $6 Miller Lite, only obtained by waiting in the hour-long beer line.

Bryan is heartbroken, if his lyrics are any indication. His fans are not, if their actions are any indication. Clean-cut college men in Peter Millar polos shotgun cheap beer in the parking lot, an admirable rebellion against the $6 beer line inside. Girls in pearly white cowboy boots fret about getting their vapes through security without their parents noticing, and, after succeeding, race to the stadium railings to pose for Instagram photos. The drunkest 19-year-old I’ve ever seen screams “We love you Zach!” in the ear of the 6’4” bearded man wearing camo Under Armour in front of him, piquing the interest of every attendee in Section 212 waiting to see a fight break out.

All of it is fucking hilarious.

Not in a churchy, pseudo-intellectual sense. Not in the sense of that one smirking pretentious guy at the party that so badly wants to explain to everyone dancing that “Hey Ya!” is actually a sad song. Who the fuck expects people to be sad at a concert anyways?

The humor is that if they turned the music off in North Charleston Coliseum, you could’ve told me I was at a Blake Shelton concert and I would’ve believed you. My internal monologue tells me I’m being that pretentious “Hey Ya” guy. Yeah, duh, they’re both country singers. Doesn’t take a genius to consider that they might have similar fanbases. Dumbass.

The difference, of course, is that Zach Bryan would never spend 12 years of his life pretending to laugh at Adam Levine’s jokes on The Voice. No matter how badly we want to maybe-arbitrarily place them in the same genre, Zach Bryan is not Blake Shelton. Every track on his newest 34-track album American Heartbreak has more authenticity than any of Bryan’s now-“mainstream country” counterparts could ever muster.

Wikipedia places Bryan in the genre of “y’allternative,” maybe the worst portmanteau I’ve ever heard. It’s, apparently, a blend of:

alternative rock, indie rock, punk rock, heartland rock, Southern rock, progressive country, outlaw country, neotraditional country, Texas country, Red Dirt, honky-tonk, bluegrass, rockabilly, psychobilly, roots rock, hard rock, folk revival, indie folk, folk rock, folk punk, cowpunk, blues punk, blues rock, grunge, emocore, post-hardcore, and rhythm ’n’ blues.

So all this is probably meaningless.

Tracking the politics of Bryan, as well as his “y’allternative” counterpart Tyler Childers, would have you believe that his genre niche is drinking songs for people that voted for Stacy Abrams. He’s started a populist revolution against Ticketmaster’s hidden fees, he’s openly supported Bud Light and their support of transgender rights, he made comments in support of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020. But if you were at North Charleston Coliseum with me on that early summer night, you would know that not to be true.

With Bryan, we have a politically left-of-center Navy vet, sentimentally singing about whiskey and trucks, while openly satirizing the genre that welcomes him with open arms. There’s a perceived authenticity with Bryan that keeps his shots of dirt road romanticism from needing an Ibuprofen chaser. But it’s still dirt road romanticism.

Pair Bryan’s American Heartbreak with Ethel Cain’s 2022 record Preacher’s Daughter. You’ll pick up on shared commentary on generational trauma, poverty, high school football games, religious struggles, and whiskey. But Bryan’s four-chord “I-IV-vi-V” guitar progressions, accompanied by the occasional fiddle, contrast Cain’s ambient Gregorian-inspired sound. Cain is the SEC Cocteau Twins and Bryan is the Ivy League Toby Keith.

So, where do we look to categorize these artists? At this point, it’s become clear that the “country” label is rapidly becoming void of meaning. Country up-and-comers like Bailey Zimmerman are hopping on tracks with NBA Youngboy for Fast and Furious soundtracks, Taylor Swift dropped her twang and “switched genres”, and Luke Combs is topping charts with lesbian love song covers. Rationalizing all of it is impossible. So don’t.

Zach Bryan fucking rips. And that’s all that matters.