Zach Bryan, man’s best friend

During the summer of 2023, U.S. media detected a growing loneliness problem among men. They no longer had friends. They no longer liked anything.

In less than a month, The New York Times published two articles on the subject: one discussing how difficult having close friends seemed to have become, with another offering pickleball as a cure for this new pandemic.

A year later, the issue was still burning, and a solution was still pending. That is, until the 4th of July, which coincided with the release of The Great American Bar Scene (2024), the fifth album by country musician Zach Bryan. The Atlantic suggested that perhaps therein lay the cure for contemporary male loneliness. It sounded like a joke (albeit no more so than pickleball), but it confirmed an already undeniable fact: Zach Bryan had become a musical and social phenomenon. He was on his way to becoming that musician who emerges in every American generation.

Last September, Bryan performed at Michigan Stadium before 112,408 people, the largest attendance for a non-festival or free concert in U.S. history. That night, merchandise sales reached $5 million.

With Heaven on Top (2026) is the sixth album by this 29-year-old musician, who was born in Japan (at the U.S. Navy base where his parents were stationed) and raised in Oklahoma. The record was released on January 9 and soon hit No.1 on the U.S. Billboard charts. Bryan dethroned another country singer, Morgan Wallen, confirming that the genre is experiencing a golden age… and also a period of controversy.

While Wallen leads the more ideologically reactionary (he has made several racist remarks) and algorithmic faction (it took 52 songwriters to complete his 2025 album I’m the Problem) of country music, Bryan is at the forefront of a movement that fully embraces the Springsteen legacy: one that bleeds whenever the country loses its grip, offering criticism from a position of melancholic patriotism.

The singer behind Pink Skies (2024) updates this legacy with a somewhat dysfunctional personal life. This is extensively documented on his social media, which is full of notorious drinking binges (followed by periods of celebrated sobriety), highly publicized breakups (his relationship with podcaster Brianna LaPaglia has yet to be fully processed in certain U.S. newsrooms), and trips to music festivals. In his songs, he has insulted members of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), such as on the track Bad News, which is included on his latest album. The lyrics were leaked last October, and he was publicly disparaged by members of the Trump administration.

Zach Bryan debuted in 2019 with DeAnn, a stripped-down country album named after his late mother, who struggled with alcoholism. He recorded it in various houses in Oklahoma just after being discharged from the Navy. Bryan was spurred on by the burgeoning success of his rudimentary YouTube videos, in which he performed his early compositions.

Over-the-top and unpredictable in both his personal and artistic life, Bryan married content creator Samantha Leonard last New Year’s Eve at the Basilica of Santa María, in San Sebastián, Spain. There was a banquet at the Miramar Palace for 200 guests, who arrived by private plane from New York City. A smiling bull topped the wedding cake and attendees took a dip in La Concha beach. San Sebastián will also be the first stop on Bryan’s upcoming European tour.

Days after the release of his latest album, the singer — fed up with being criticized every time he released an album for being “overproduced” — announced that he had sat down at home with his guitar and a microphone to re-record all the songs, providing fans with an acoustic version.

A man’s best friend is another man capable of doing things like this, all to keep the bond alive.

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