Not a fan.
Zach Bryan is a pretty divisive figure these days, due more to his off stage antics than his undeniable songwriting talent. From his fence-scaling stunt last month in pursuit of Gavin Adcock to his long history of social media tirades against seemingly anyone who comes across his feed and of course his public breakup and feud with ex-girlfriend Brianna Chickenfry, Bryan is no stranger to stirring up some controversy.
Most recently, though, Zach is turning heads after teasing an uncharacteristically political song.
In the newly-teased “Bad News,” Bryan begins the song with a fairly standard verse by his standards, opening the song up by telling his woman he woke up missing her before dropping a potential reference to his viral 2023 arrest and calling the cops “cocky motherf******.”
“Didn’t wake up dead or in jail
Some out of town boys been giving us hell
I got some bad news
I woke up missing you
My friends are all degenerates but they’re all I got
The generational story of dropping the plot
I heard the cops came
Cocky mother******* ain’t they?”
It’s the second verse of “Bad News” that is bound to raise a few eyebrows on both the left and right. Immediately, Bryan takes aim at the current ICE raids happening around the country, singing that they’re “gonna come bust down your door.” He then makes reference to his mentor and collaborator, Bruce Springsteen, later in the verse, noting that “The Boss stopped bumping” before proclaiming that the titular “Bad News” is the fading state of our country.
“And ICE is gonna come, bust down your door
Try to build a house no one builds no more
But I got a telephone
Kids are all scared and all alone
The Boss stopped bumping, the rock stopped rolling
The middle fingers rising and it won’t stop showing
I got some bad news
The fading of the red, white and blue”
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Naturally the song drew some pretty strong reactions on both sides of the political aisle – including from fellow country artist John Rich.
The outspoken conservative and one half of the hitmaking duo Big & Rich took to social media to give his thoughts on the song, blasting Zach Bryan as representative of the current state of the Nashville country music industry:
And he also compared Zach to the famously liberal Dixie Chicks:
It’s no surprise that John isn’t exactly a fan of the song. One of the most outspoken supporters of President Donald Trump, and one of the most outspoken conservatives in country music, John has long warned that country music was controlled by liberal New York and Los Angeles record executives – and called out his fellow conservative artists for being afraid to speak out.
During a recent interview with Shawn Ryan, John described what he saw as the culture shift in country music in the past decade or so:
“It was in the 20-teens, probably 2010, around in that range, when Obama became president, you saw Music Row, a lot of the original guys that were running those labels from back in the day, which were actually country music fans and they were mostly all patriotic guys and really talented and they were country music to the core.
They started replacing those people with people from LA, people from New York. They would bring in a New York guy to replace the Nashville guy at, for instance, RCA Records or something. And when the new guy comes in he would start changing the culture of that label, which bled all the way down into the artist, and it bled all the way down into the publicity departments, and what kind of songs you were allowed to cut and not cut, what interviews you were allowed to do, who you were allowed to interview with.”
And he’s also called out transplants from other states like New York and California for destroying the city of Nashville while taking advantage of the more conservative state:
“Nashville has been overrun for the past 15 years by liberals from other states. They come here because we have no state income tax, the city is fun, the people are nice…then they elect people just like the one’s from whence they came and destroy it. Like locusts.”
Safe to say we won’t be seeing a John Rich/Zach Bryan collab any time soon.
