In 2025, Zac Brown (and by extension Zac Brown Band) has quite a complicated history. As we know, the band itself was nothing short of lightning in a jar early in their career, beginning it with three straight classic albums, The Foundation, You Get What You Give and Uncaged, right out of the gate.
As time has gone on, both the quality of their releases and Brown’s personal life have been heavily called into question. In the studio, the past decade has been plagued by head scratching releases such as The Owl and the Georgia native’s solo, pop project, The Controversy. Out of the studio, Brown has seen himself at the center of controversies centering around his divorce and following legal battles with his ex wife, Kelly Yazdi.
One thing that cannot be denied regardless of the current trajectory of both Brown and the band’s career right now is the success that came upon the release of their debut album, The Foundation, and more specifically with the release of their debut 2008 single, “Chicken Fried.”
As one of the most popular country songs released in the 2000s, “Chicken Fried’s” accomplishments are nothing short of impressive. Beyond its 9x platinum certification from the RIAA, 859 million streams on Spotify alone and nomination for Single and Song of the Year at the 43rd CMA Awards, the smash hit also became the first debut single to reach #1 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart since Heartland’s “I Loved Her First” in 2006.
The story behind the admittedly simple and straightforward song is much more complicated than what meets the eye, however.
Beyond the well-documented feud with The Lost Trailers who recorded and released the song as a single against Brown’s wishes before replacing it on country radio, the 47-year-old singer/songwriter recently revealed in an interview with Zach Sang that “Chicken Fried” actually took years to fully finish.
As Brown recalls, his longtime co-writer, Wyatt Durrette, had the song’s chorus written down on a napkin. Loving the direction of the chorus, he and Durrette would begin making a list of things that they loved about being American, which resulted in the formation of the verses.
“It was a process. The guy that I was writing with, he had had the chorus of that. It was written on a napkin behind the bar, and I loved that. So when we kind of had an idea of what the chorus was, we made a list of all the things that we love about being in America and being free. Then we pulled from that list all of the things in the verses.”
The “Colder Weather” singer would then reveal that the song, in its entirety, actually took years to fully form. At one point, they had a third and final verse, which he described as “funny.” However, they ended up scrapping it and replacing it with the patriotic one we all know now.
“For the first two years, we had a whole another verse that was kind of a funny verse, but I knew it wasn’t the right one. I knew it; we could beat that one. Then the patriotic verse came to me, and that’s when [there was a chance] to give props to all the people that have sacrificed so that we can be free here living our American dream. So that we can be free here to play music and create and grind and do the things that we do.”
Wrapping up, Brown would finish by calling “Chicken Fried’s” long creation process a “journey,” noting that the only way to write a good song is to push past settling for mediocre lines.
“That was a journey. I mean, it was years of working on that song. I was playing it in bars. I was playing it every night with this other verse in it before we had the final one together. I think it’s just really not settling. You don’t settle for mediocrity. If there’s a mediocre line in it, then you gotta keep fighting and keep going until you find the right one and just not settling. I think that’s the way you get to a good song.”
Given that “Chicken Fried” is not only one of the most recognizable country songs released over the past two decades but also well on its way to become one of the rare certified diamond songs in the genre, something tells me that Brown knew what he was doing waiting for so long to finish the now-classic track.
Watch here:
@zachsangshow You know I like my chicken fried @Zac Brown Band @Zac Brown #zacbrownband #lyrics #songwriter #zachsangshow #fyp ♬ original sound – Zach Sang Show
“Chicken Fried”
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