The 20 Best Zach Bryan Songs

From 2020’s Elisabeth, “Revival” is a fine example of the campfire singalong song style that’s become bread and butter for Bryan. It’s set in the midst of a full-on rager, and Bryan finds his salvation in bourbon and Johnny Cash, even if he realizes it’s only a temporary reprieve from a world that’ll make him crazy.

Bryan hands down a fierce indictment of the music industry and the people who run it in “Cold Damn Vampires,” from American Heartbreak. “Don’t let ‘em steal your hope, child/turn it something green,” he sings, doing his best to offer some advice to a young woman who’s got artistic dreams but has to fend off the gropers and bloodsuckers to keep her vision uncompromised.

Bryan frequently draws on his own Oklahoma upbringing to tell stories of getting out of places or the ones who are left behind. “November Air” is the latter, a tale of a reunion between mother and son after he’s been out to experience the world. In coming back, he’s acknowledging the huge sacrifices she made for her children to have better. He knows she won’t get to live the way he has, but suggests that their good memories can knock the chill off the present.

“The only bad you’ve ever done was to see the good in me,” Bryan sings in “Sun to Me,” an acknowledgement that he’s capable of being an asshole to someone who treats him well. Time has given him the gift of being able to see how this person helped him sprout out of the darkest places and now he’s giving full-throated praise. A sweet ode from an imperfect narrator.

Bryan hooked up with one of his musical heroes, Bon Iver, for the title track of his 2023 EP. It’s an uncharacteristically indieish production from Bryan, a gauzy atmosphere full of strings and piano, plus a downcast melody. Justin Vernon’s beautiful voice doubles Bryan’s melody one octave higher for the whole track, and together they say thanks to their true believers: “You stuck around when I was down/and I’ll owe you all my days.”

Bryan was singing about his own traumas from the jump, and “Messed Up Kid” is one of the best examples. With his layers of damage, he can’t quite comprehend while this one woman could see love in him. “I’ll turn a saint into a heathen with my hands goin’ through your hair,” he sings, part confession, part warning.

On his 2019 debut DeAnn, Bryan was already skilled at writing about the brutality of heartbreak. “Condemned” admonishes a some-time lover not to keep toying with him, shifting between quickly strummed country verses and half-time, sustained choruses. “If you plan on leaving, don’t come at all,” he sings, and you better believe he means it. 

Punk-like in its intensity, “Heavy Eyes” is a snapshot of what it looks like to be young and stupid and reckless. Whether it’s being drunk in the back of a Bronco or baked on someone’s homegrown supply, it’s about living in the moment while you still have the energy to do it. Even if you’ve aged and settled down, it’s exhilarating enough to make all those memories come flooding right back.

Impressionistic and visually rich at the same time, “Fifth of May” starts with a description of a photograph of his mother on a humid day, but then shifts to his own brokenhearted present. Little notes of affection from his ex are still saved in a shoebox somewhere far away, and he feels her absence in his bed. “It’s the getting’ by that’ll get us all down/So if you need me, know that I’m bleeding,” he sings, “somewhere alone in some coastal town.”

Another of Bryan’s songs that has different incarnations, “Hey Driver” features a typically thrilling appearance by the duo War and Treaty on the album version from Zach Bryan. Bryan’s protagonist feels adrift and exhausted, ready to start over somewhere and put down roots for a change. “Hey driver, I’m so tired of the ways of this old world/Just drive until the tires melt,” he sings, while Michael and Tanya from the War and Treaty add some sizzling soul.

Bryan plays up his blue-collar credentials in “Quittin’ Time,” a banjo-led number from the Summertime Blues EP. He’s pushing steel and roofing expensive houses, saving his money and dreaming of the time when he can get back to see his lover. “Oh, one day it’ll be quittin’ time,” he sings, but it’s ambiguous — he could just as easily mean death as clocking out after a shift.

Right from the beginning, Bryan understood the value in writing songs everyone would want to sing with him. In “Heading South,” sings of being a misunderstood artist and then one day getting his comeuppance. That’s all fine and well, but it’s really about the communal feeling of shouting that chorus from the top: “Don’t stop goin’, goin’ South/’Cause they’ll let you play your music real damn loud.”

Bryan frequently focuses on his own misdeeds, but “Tourniquet” (from his self-titled 2023 album) is a nice change of pace in which he offers his shoulder to someone who’s been suffering. “I’ll bandage up your body and your bones and your bad days too,” he sings, a promise to be a shelter for someone who desperately needs it.

In a shift of perspective, “Billy Stay” puts Bryan in the role of an old woman singing to her beloved husband as he succumbs to dementia. “I’ll keep my ears open to keep from crying,” he sings. It would be almost unbearably sad if Bryan hadn’t given it a truly rousing chorus that comes off sounding triumphant in the face of terrible loss.

A live fan favorite that Bryan finally released in studio form on the 2023 EP Boys of Faith, “Deep Satin” shows Bryan stretching out with a woozy, horn-laced country-rock production. Lyrically, it’s all about memory and mistakes, as so many Bryan songs are — scenes from a trip to Manhattan, a snippet of a Grateful Dead song, a long Greyhound ride. “When you see the lights, when you hear the rain/Is there a chance you’re thinkin’ of me?” he sings, a fiery intensity in his voice as he asks the question.

Longing for a simpler life is a classic country trope, and in this 2022 release, Bryan dreams of an existence full of shade trees, a little land to spread out, a kind woman, and a well-trained dog before his flame finally gets snuffed out. He injects it with such sadness and urgency that it feels like something new, a lament on a loss of innocence so severe that is like staring across a chasm too wide to cross.

One of Bryan’s oldest compositions, “God Speed” appears on 2019’s DeAnn and depicts a man dreaming about a life of possibilities beyond the constant bickering he has to manage on a daily basis. Eventually, he imagines, he and his old buddies will “laugh about how we all thought it won’t end/how we all wind up where we begin,” imbuing the song with hope for a long, well-examined life.

Bryan worked with country trailblazer Kacey Musgraves on “I Remember Everything,” in which a former couple reunite to hash out their memories. Bryan, reprising his role as wounded guy, wants to remind her about when the times were good and maybe forget about some of the times when he was an asshole. Musgraves says it’s much too late now: “You’ll never be the man you always swore, but I’ll remember you singin’ in that ’88 Ford,” she sings. Some memories are best left in the past.

There are a couple versions of “Something in the Orange” out there between the rawer Z&E’s Version included on American Heartbreak and the more produced standalone single version. Both are great, so ride for whichever one you prefer. Lyrically, the “orange” sunset works nicely as a metaphor for a relationship in its last moments, slipping off the horizon as his lover’s taillights slip out of sight for good.

Augmented by some lonesome fiddle licks, “Oklahoma Smokeshow” has a touch of the epic sweep usually associated with Bruce Springsteen compositions. Instead of New Jersey, it’s small-town Oklahoma and our protagonist is smitten with the hottest woman in town, but she seems to have friend-zoned him for good. Bryan cooks up some of his loveliest couplets and imagery here — her nose recoiling from the whiskey in one guy’s glass, the way “small vices kill your big dreams” in local watering holes, her getting all “gussied up” with nowhere to go just because that’s what is expected of her. It’s an entire movie, but this one doesn’t come with a happy ending.