An unwitting, almost accidental country-music superstar, 28-year-old Zach Bryan spent nearly a decade in the Navy, where he outfitted aircraft with munitions by day and wrote confessional songs at night, until earning an honorable discharge to work on music full time. His prolificacy and gift for songwriting — which cuts through the bluster you might expect from a flaxen-haired, clean-shaven professional handler of explosives — would award him star status without having to navigate the protracted courtship of venues, label execs, and producers it tends to take to make a household name out of a sentimental acoustic-guitar darling. But Bryan also occupies the curious space of reliable chart and amphitheater draw you rarely encounter on country radio.
That this feel-good independent success story remains a relative persona non grata around the stations dedicated to playing music like his gives the lie to the notion that radio is chiefly a business of promoting the music most people want to hear. A sense that his very existence is a point of controversy keeps Bryan distant and silent, speaking most poignantly through songs but only sporadically about them. It’s been 11 months since his last proper interview, a Joe Rogan Experience appearance that drew his chad-mystic sensibilities into sharp relief while teasing out how conflict averse the singer who has made news for tiffs with police and other artists wishes he could be.
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