Okay Zac Brown… that’s certainly one way to put it.
The frontman of the Zac Brown Band has a lot on his plate and on his mind right now. He and his group have entered a “new chapter,” and have a brand new album titled Love & Fear coming out on December 5. That’s the same day that they launch their Las Vegas Sphere residency, which is something that Brown has spent a lot of time – and money – on.
Somehow in all of that, he found time to sit down with comedian Bert Kreischer on his Bertcast podcast to discuss everything that’s going on in his life, and how things are going leading up to the release of the new album and his band’s corresponding run of shows at the Sphere. It’s clear that Brown has poured his heart and soul into his band’s latest endeavor.
That being said, Zac Brown has said on many occasions that he values his time outside of music. He explained to Bert Kreischer that working in the music business comes with a lot of opportunity cost. When the “Chicken Fried” singer pours himself into his craft, he doesn’t have time to do other things, like fishing with his son.
Brown went on to say that over the years, he’s redefined what a successful life looks like for him. There for a while, he was chasing number one hits, money, etc… and he described that process with quite the interesting metaphor:
“I’m trying to engineer my life, because one of the things that I learned is that every few years, you have to redefine what success looks like to you. Before, it was like, ‘Okay I want to figure out how to have number one songs on the radio. I want to figure out how to do this, hire a big radio team, hire seven executives, have them working on radio full time.’
You don’t get a number one song by having a good song. You get a number one song by sucking every **** in f****** radio land. The team digs them all up and helps me suck up 200 in a day. Let’s just get it all over with. I put my Carmex on and I go to sucking.”
Alright… that’s figuratively speaking, of course.
Zac Brown doubled down on his colorful explanation by elaborating on the moment that he finally realized that chasing chart toppers wasn’t what it’s all about. He evidently had some sort of an “ah-ha” moment where the process to get the number one’s was no longer his priority.
Brown said that it in a different way though:
“You get as much done in a day as you can so then you can (focus elsewhere). Then after six or seven years of that, we were so blessed and had 16 or 17 number one songs. But at some point, you wake up and you’re like, ‘I don’t want to suck **** anymore.’ So you take a break for four or five years and you see what you can gain.”
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget that Zac Brown said all of those things in that way. At the very least, it was cracking up Bert Kreischer and his team of producers.
Obviously, we all understand what Zac Brown is getting at there. Could he have used “kissing a**” instead of… what he used? You bet, but it wouldn’t have been as memorable. Honestly… pretty hilarious, and more importantly, accurate. Zac has been doing this thing for a long time, he knows how it works, and he knows how much young artists start bending over backwards to get success. Especially when their idea of “success” is a #1 song on country radio.
But I can promise all you young artists this… you’ll never regret the day you stopped sucking the metaphorical D of the corporate country music machine, and started chasing your dreams with a purpose and intentionality, letting creativity and passion drive the art… not the opinion of some radio DJ you’ve never heard of, in a state you’ve never been to before.
You can hear more from Zac Brown on what it takes to get number one hits, and why he stopped chasing that dragon in the interview below:
Bertcast #697: Zac Brown
