Zach Top’s “I Never Lie” is apparently getting stuck in a lot of people’s heads.
The 27-year-old artist has slowly but surely seen a number of his recently released songs gain traction on the charts (and in the hearts… of fans). Top’s debut album Cold Beer & Country Music came out back in April, and ever since then, two of the project’s tracks have continued to stand out to fans of country music: “Sounds Like The Radio” and “I Never Lie.”
Both of them are indisputable, everything-you-want-in-a-country-song hits. Many are quick to point out that Zach Top sounds like he’s from a different era, but I can assure you that he’s not 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 Keith Whitley.
“Sounds Like The Radio” has performed well on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart, reaching as high as the 16th spot. But it’s “I Never Lie” that marks the first time Zach Top’s music has cracked the Billboard Hot 100. It has reached as high as 68 on the list, and shortly after it entered into the chart, Top and his team sent in to country radio.
Top has admitted that he didn’t see “I Never Lie” becoming as big as it is, but when he spoke with Billboard about his song reaching the Hot 100 list, he had a couple of ideas as to why it’s become a hit:
“It may be the countriest song on the record. It sticks out and there’s nothing but steel guitar on there – you haven’t heard a song like that, sonically, in a long time. I think people have had an appetite for my kind of country for a little while, and we’re getting a dose of it. Songs like ‘Sounds Like the Radio’ and ‘Cold Beer & Country Music,’ you would expect those to be hits because they are up-tempo. This song goes in the face of what’s out there right now.”
The song is certainly not like anything else that’s been put out in the modern day country music scene. So maybe Zach Top just recognized that there was a longing for that classic country sound, and he just happened to specialize in it. The young artist has been taken back by the support he’s gotten over the last couple of months, and said that he first realized “I Never Lie” was a hit because fans would lose it when they recognized Top and his band were going into the song at their shows:
“We had been playing it in live shows, so people already knew it. Around April 5, we had our album release show, and over the last four months, it has really taken off. Our fans know every word of every song on the album – they are not just waiting to hear one song. It gives me chills every night when we play that first riff (of ‘I Never Lie’). They don’t need to hear no words, they know it from that first note.”
And obviously, a number of up-and-coming artists are either being discovered on or utilizing the social media platform known as TikTok (or both). The traction and buzz that Zach Top’s first Billboard 100 hit has garnered has certainly been helped by its emergence on TikTok. Top is perfectly fine with that, but wanted to let people know that he’s not a big social media person:
“I don’t get on social media much. There is a girl named Cheyenne in my band who has TikTok and she’ll tell me about videos that have ‘I Never Lie’ or other songs in them. I was never very into social media – it was just a tool to get music out there. Early this year, I turned it all over (to my team). I don’t have the apps on my phone, and I don’t think I have the logins. It can suck you in, scrolling through, and I think it’s probably healthy for me to stay off it.”
We’d all probably benefit from being a little more like Zach Top in that area.
But anyways, now seems like the perfect time to fire up “I Never Lie,” doesn’t it?
