Happy Monday, y’all.
Today for the Song of the Week, we have a tune called “Sun to Me” by Zach Bryan.
A solo write by Zach from his recent debut studio album, American Heartbreak, it’s become one of my absolute favorites on the dense and phenomenal 34-song tracklist.
It’s taken a while to fully digest all the great music he delivered on that record, but as I’ve had more time to take it all in, I find myself going back to “Sun to Me” often.
A simple love song about how much he cares for this girl, he details how simple their first meeting was with beautiful imagery of how he saw her through the cloud of his cigarette smoke and was clearly taken right away, yet he doesn’t even recall what she was wearing.
He plays into that brooding, bad boy image a little bit too, as he notes the contrast between where they come from and how she might end up with a broken heart, because the only bad thing she ever did in her life was giving him a chance:
“I don’t recall what you were wearin’ on the first night we met
Besides the subtle cloud around you from my last cigarette
And you come from a good place with a happy family
The only bad you’ve ever done was to see the good in me
But I’ve been livin’, waitin’ on the day
That the good Lord willin’, send you out my way
I’ve seen hard timеs, bad luck, all that in-between
Sweetest of the sunflowеrs, yeah, you’re the sun to me”
There’s also a lovely lyric later in the song where he talks about advice he received when he was younger from his late mother and how she told him, “you’ll find someone, someday, somewhere that grows you to the clouds,” that I find so endearing and unique.
We all have different favorites from this album, and rightfully so because there’s a lot to pick from, but if you haven’t taken the time to focus on this one yet, I highly recommend doing so today.
Honestly, I think it’s one of the best songs in his entire catalog:
