To utilize one of Zach Top’s songs in this opening line, “I Never Lie” when I tell others to listen to up-and-coming artists.
The recommendation that’s number one on my radar is the man who is single handedly bringing classic country back: Zach Top. If you’ve never heard his stuff, you’ve got to seek it out. If you have heard of him, you probably first thought to yourself when you heard Top, “I haven’t heard this Alan Jackson song before.”
Zach Top isn’t trying to mimic any one person or any one style. He’s just pure country, and the music that he writes and records just so happens to harken back to the simpler times of 90’s country. And that’s no mistake or coincidence. Growing up, Zach Top loved 90’s country icons like George Strait, and the very first song that Top set out to learn was one of Straits all-time-hits, as he discussed on the Spout Podcast:
“That’s always where my heart was. That was what I wanted to do. The first song I ever asked to learn how to play when I was five years old was ‘Amarillo by Morning.'”
Top just released his debut album Cold Beer and Country Music in April of this year. Though he’s only really burst onto the scene in the past couple of years, one could say that he’s been working on his introductory project for half a decade. Zach wanted to make sure he got his first impression right, even if it meant delaying his debut:
“The oldest song on there is four or five years old. ‘Lonely for Long’ was one of the first things we wrote when I started coming to Nashville. I’ve been chomping at the bit for a long time. But I was told it was always important to wait longer and make the right first impression. Second chances are hard to come by in the music business if you botch that first impression.”
Wise beyond his years.
The 27-year-old went on to say that it felt like a switch flipped in his country music career just before he released Cold Beer and Country Music. Top had been playing a lot of his new stuff live, and he noticed that fans that were coming back to see him again and again were already memorizing his unreleased songs.
That’s when things really seemed to take off, and he said one song in particular has seemingly caught fire:
“We were playing like 200 or 300 cap rooms and hoping maybe 100 or 150 show up to make it feel full enough. Then all of the sudden, everything started selling out in advance and we’re showing up knowing we’re playing to a full room. And rooms just kept getting bigger and bigger. Once that record dropped… ‘I Never Lie’ has kind of been the thing off the record that’s really poked its head up.”
I SLEEP LIKE A BABY, I NEVER SHOW UP LATE FOR WORK.
You know, that one? “I Never Lie” has become Zach Top’s signature song… at least thus far. And interestingly enough, the young country music artist didn’t really expect for it to be the one that got the most traction with his fans and country music listeners:
“It’s funny. That’s either favorite or second favorite song on the record, for me. But I wasn’t expecting that one to be the one that kind of takes off and be the ‘hit’ so to speak of the whole thing. It’s cool.”
You can hear more from Zach Top in the interview below:
