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Zach Bryan is an avid learner, always taking pains to credit his sources. Now a stadium-level star who hears his accounts of 21st century unrest sung back to him by thousands of people every time he performs, he began his music-making life as a Naval petty officer uploading phone videos to YouTube and just wanting to do his idols proud. Even as he found his fan base with original compositions, Bryan has always aligned himself with the peers and elders whom, in his first viral hit, 鈥淗eading South,鈥� he identified as his 鈥渒ind.鈥� His earnest social media posts extolling the genius of or the Turnpike Troubadours reinforced his image as a sort of male , always extending a hand to others even as his own charisma burned a path toward the top of the charts.
On The Great American Bar Scene, his fifth album in as many years within a steady stream of EP鈥檚, singles and live albums, Bryan continues to uphold the community he values above all. He colors his lyrics with references to songs by and ; brings in the young Canadian troubadour Noeline Hofmann to share vocals on her ballad 鈥淧urple Gas鈥�; and gives guest slots to not only (predictable) but his fellow Oklahoman and songwriter鈥檚 songwriter . Often a lonely voice within his own tales of botched romance and anomie, as a performer, Bryan shares space to make the point that legacies only grow through cross-pollination. And on Bar Scene, one influence-turned-friend casts a benign shadow on all the rest: the Boss himself, .
The Boss shows up as Bryan鈥檚 duet partner on 鈥�,鈥� a love song that ties together yearning and refusal in ways so similar to Springsteen鈥檚 own 1984 hit 鈥淚鈥檓 on Fire鈥� that it almost seems like a writing exercise Bryan assigned himself. It鈥檚 an arrogant form of homage, but the younger man earns it 鈥� here and throughout The Great American Bar Scene, Bryan makes his case as Springsteen鈥檚 favored son by enacting his own version of the slippery authenticity that allowed the greatest rock star of the 1980s to emerge from scrappy roots to become a generational spokesman, reaching a peak with Born in the U.S.A. 鈥� an of cultural currency this summer. I鈥檓 using the word 鈥渟lippery鈥� deliberately here. Bryan鈥檚 art builds on Springsteen鈥檚 method of cleansing old stories of the markers that could make them feel dated and reanimating them in new settings, not just with new clothes but with different voices and particular outcomes.
Examples of this abound in Springsteen鈥檚 work, especially from the late 1970s into the mid-1980s. In 鈥淪tate Trooper,鈥� which appears on 1982鈥檚 Nebraska and is name-checked by Bryan in Bar Scene鈥檚 title track, the iconic Western desert outlaw haunted by vultures鈥� cries becomes a working man-turned-car thief tormented by the yammering voices on talk radio; 鈥淕lory Days鈥� finds a knight stripped of his armor in the form of a high school baseball player drinking himself ever further past his prime.
Most notoriously, Born in the U.S.A.'s titular anthem reanimates the tragedy of the wounded soldier that runs through American culture from Whitman to Hemingway to Michael Cimino鈥檚 The Deer Hunter, adjusting it for the Reagan era, when dominant conservative forces were actively working to bury the damage caused by America鈥檚 interventions in Vietnam. Like all of those other anti-war patriots, with this song, Springsteen milks the allure of nationalist rhetoric only to defuse it with a story that shows its poisonous effects.
As a mega-hit, 鈥淏orn in the U.S.A.鈥� made history by being misunderstood: The porousness of its relationship to patriotism made it seem like a nationalist anthem when it was really a protest song. This frustrated Springsteen, who publicly rejected Reagan鈥檚 advances and released a humanizing veterans as resilient but suffering. Some stand in line at a payday lender, others laugh at a bar but display their injuries, still more lie buried in generic, white stone-marked graves. Like the song itself, Sayles鈥� video captured the deep alienation many people experienced as they realized Reagan鈥檚 Morning in America only shone brightly on a select few. Conservatives鈥� misappropriations only reinforced its point, that the slogans blaring forth in the public square were often so much noise pollution, covering up the cries of pain from those unable to forget their realities and join in.
Over 40 years, it鈥檚 become clear that 鈥淏orn in the U.S.A.鈥� matters precisely because it . Springsteen captured a prime quality of the 1980s, the decade he spent as rock鈥檚 crossover king: the persistent feeling that the era鈥檚 shiny party aura was covering up a stench. The mercenary yuppie optimism much of popular culture reinforced covered up devastating inequities, not only among the mostly white working men Springsteen spoke for but for Black Americans demonized by the 鈥渃rack epidemic,鈥� queer people dying of AIDS and anyone else who didn鈥檛 or couldn鈥檛 buy into it. Born in the U.S.A. hit like a victory party, but it lasted because its real business was acknowledging the hangover. Putting America鈥檚 most treasured tales in the mouths of men who spoke in broken sentences, Springsteen deglamorized its mythos while retaining its allure. He wasn鈥檛 the first to do this 鈥� he owed a debt to the great blues singers, country greats like and his beloved girl groups and soul stars. But as a white man with the force of rock supremacy behind him, Springsteen was able to embody something that was strong but vulnerable: the illusory American dream.
Bryan鈥檚 songs are evolving toward a similar powerful slipperiness, in a different way for a different time. He has frequently insisted that his music is not political, going so far to say on X recently that people who take sides in political discussions 鈥渄on鈥檛 have anything interesting to do or say.鈥� It鈥檚 telling that his duet with Springsteen doesn鈥檛 go anywhere near the working man, and certainly not near any war zones; instead, it returns to the moment when working-man鈥檚 bard Bruce became sex symbol Bruce with a few synth flourishes (also audible in Born in the U.S.A.鈥檚 鈥淒ancing in the Dark鈥�). 鈥淪andpaper鈥� casts the rock patriarch in a mysterious role; I鈥檓 reading it as an older version of Bryan, reflecting years later on the loss of a woman who left him raw and yet still rapt. (This song is an odd case of a Bryan metaphor being a little off 鈥� I鈥檓 really not handy, but does sandpaper actually 鈥渂ind鈥�?) It鈥檚 an unexpected casting on an album that, despite Bryan鈥檚 insistence, does resonate in ways that recall Born in the U.S.A.鈥檚 complicated impact.
Nineteen tracks long, with a signature spoken-word intro that allows Bryan to place the album within the arc of his career, The Great American Bar Scene has room for several different varieties of storytelling. There are plenty of love songs, the usual Bryan kind in which his inadequacies fail his partner鈥檚 expectations. There are thorny anthems like the John Mayer feature 鈥淏etter Days.鈥� And there are plenty of chances for Bryan to play into his lore with autobiographical references to his discomfort with fame and his pleasure in a thriving relationship with podcaster Brianna LaPaglia. Bryan鈥檚 also included a mini-arc that directly invokes classic Springsteen songs, especially from Nebraska, whose sound most closely resembles Bryan鈥檚 subdued, acoustic approach; on these songs, he clearly adapts others鈥� personae to tell stories of mild outlawry and fading masculine prowess. They鈥檙e exquisitely crafted, but I find them less interesting than the ones that display Bryan鈥檚 unique form of slipperiness: the way he manages to humbly and almost imperceptibly make a broken myth of himself.
This is something Springsteen has rarely done. Despite the rock star status that makes people care very much about his personal life, he鈥檚 always been a folkie fiction writer, casting himself within tales that very clearly don鈥檛 reflect events from his own life. This is what connects him to , another giant who, even when he does skirt openly confessional songwriting, prefers to remain masked and anonymous. Springsteen鈥檚 rise, in fact, marked a major turn away from the openly confessional singer-songwriter era. That turn would extend into the 1990s and beyond, among male rockers at least; the heroes of grunge, for example, obscured their own stories within cryptic word salads. Bryan鈥檚 stardom follows a turn back toward the personal led by Americountry success stories like Isbell and . He wants to be recognized. What makes his music slippery 鈥� and both more interesting and, despite his protestations, political 鈥� are the bigger stories he doesn鈥檛 quite so clearly articulate.
Foremost among them is his experience as part of a military family. Born on a naval base in Japan, Bryan himself enlisted at 17 and served eight years before being honorably discharged to pursue his musical career. He did tours in Djibouti and Bahrain, apparently not seeing combat, but still entering into that experience as the American presence abroad is facing increasing global scrutiny. The sense of dislocation in his songs is tangled up with his memories of service and mixed feelings about leaving it behind in favor of music. 鈥淚 was supposed to die a military man, chest out too far with a drink in my hand,鈥� he sings in the new song 鈥淣orthern Thunder,鈥� one of his most succinct complaints about the difficult life of the touring musician. His discomfort with having left that path permeates the song, but elsewhere he notes its cost, citing a young soldier wrecked by his first tour in 鈥淎merican Nights鈥� and evoking the instability of the military lifestyle in family sagas like 鈥淏ass Boat.鈥�
Bryan believes in the men who served, whom he considers brothers, comparing them favorably to the swaggering pretenders he meets in the music world: 鈥淣ow everyone I know鈥檚 an outlaw, country to their core,鈥� he sings in 鈥淏athwater.鈥� 鈥淏ut the only outlaw I鈥檝e known served in the Corps.鈥� The haunting presence of these enlisted men lends gravitas to Bryan鈥檚 tales of bar and road life; their stories are the ones that ground and torment him, even if he鈥檚 hesitant to lay them open. Their mostly silent witness adds complicated depth to the restlessness at the heart of Bryan鈥檚 writerly persona: There is a feeling of unfinished business within his songs, of regret and anger at crises and sacrifices that go unacknowledged.
This thread intertwines with his references to a sometimes troubled childhood and the ever-present threat of alcoholism to form a picture of American working-class life (mostly white and rural, though not necessarily so) that fights against the sentimentalizing impulse that can also surface in Bryan鈥檚 writing. He hasn鈥檛 yet reckoned with the power structures that mire his characters in their limbos; that鈥檚 one difference from Springsteen, who always made sure to identify the people (police officers, fathers, drug lords) and institutions (marriage, industrial capitalism) that made exercising free will a dicey proposition for his anti-heroes and heroines. If Bryan gets there, he might write an album like Springsteen鈥檚 underrated classic The Ghost of Tom Joad, which showed how the folk impulse to fight for a people, and not just individuals, could work within rock and roll.
Where Bryan stands now still proves powerful. For all of its wordiness (he invokes his own notebook collection more than anyone since was Slim Shady), Bryan鈥檚 lyrics reach for what has not been spoken, not in the cathartic spirit of protest, but in a more personal vein. His music does the same. Even as he鈥檚 built out his songs to translate for a mass audience, Bryan continues to leave plenty of space within his sound, working with his band and occasional co-producers to retain the feel of a live performance or of demos instead of beefing up the mix. He sings very close to the mic, only pulling out the full power of his tenor for the odd chaotic moment. (A jarring one: the final harmony on 鈥淢emphis; The Blues,鈥� his duet with Moreland, who is a master of restraint.)
No longer do most tracks feel like solo ventures recorded on a phone, but Bryan has resisted committing to a style or genre even as he鈥檚 grown his sound. There鈥檚 a Celtic feel to a few tracks here, a bit of honky-tonk, a fair amount of folkish indie in the vein of and . Yet The Great American Bar Scene still sounds huge, just as Born in the U.S.A. once did, because it fully engages with the aesthetics of its pop moment. The 1980s demanded that Bruce go massive. The 2020s require that Zach stay in scale. Maintaining his distance from clear genre markers, stubbornly insisting on his own point of view, Bryan stands alongside innovators from many different corners of the poly-genre spectrum: early , , , .
Where that point of view gets political is in the silence, too. In a recent New York Review of Books essay, Marilynne Robinson asks readers dismayed by America鈥檚 current political disarray to : 鈥渢he gross maldistribution of the burdens and consequences of our wars.鈥� Referring specifically to the 4,400 American lives lost in Iraq, which have not yet been honored by a national memorial, she connects the seemingly inarticulate grievances of many living Americans to this and other major losses rarely acknowledged in public discourse. 鈥淥ur foreign entanglements have passed through permutations that make them truly baffling,鈥� she writes.
Bryan, who鈥檚 written songs in the past reflecting his own confusion over exactly what he was fighting when overseas, makes music for the baffled: those who want to believe in things like family, love, America, but who have been shell-shocked and carted around in darkness and are now just trying to find a way back. He doesn鈥檛 have to name a party affiliation to make this clear. It鈥檚 right there in The Great American Bar Scene鈥檚 song 鈥淏oons,鈥� an ode to country living that鈥檚 also a dirge about it 鈥� its isolation, the way it makes people anonymous. 鈥淟et me die out in the boons,鈥� Bryan murmurs as he plucks a circular guitar chord and a chorus of -esque angels lifts his voice a little higher. Forget me, he says. You won鈥檛 be able to forget me, the song insists.
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