Zach Bryan's New Album 2024 - ‘The Great American Bar Scene’: Everything We Know So Far

When it comes to modern album rollouts, artists seem to be almost unanimously eschewing the traditional, single-by-single release strategy in favour of showering listeners with a virtually endless stream of new songs, snippets and teasers.

The figurehead of this wave of artists striving for both quantity and quality is Zach Bryan, who sometimes seems to tease a new unreleased song every single day.

As a result, it's perhaps unsurprising - yet nonetheless exciting - that Zach Bryan has already confirmed he's currently readying the follow-up to his widely lauded 2023 self-titled album.

During the first of his two 2024 homecoming shows in Oklahoma City, Zach revealed the lead single from his forthcoming record, The Great American Bar Scene, would be released on Friday, May 24th, before later unveiling this as the viral ‘Pink Skies (Eulogy)’.

In an earlier social media post, Zach Bryan teased that Noeline Hofmann - a previous guest on his much-loved Belting Broncos video series - would be guesting on his new album, with the two artists having seemingly recorded a revamped version of Noeline's hugely popular unreleased track, ‘Purple Gas’, for Zach's project.

The Oklahoma singer-songwriter took to X on Boxing Day to announce that his hotly anticipated new project is “about half done”, before sharing “depending on the writing side who knows [when it will come out], God willing as soon as possible”.

In a subsequent post on X, Zach Bryan revealed he has a song called ‘The Great American Bar Scene’ on the record, with many fans speculating that this could be the title-track. In January, he uploaded a snippet of another original called ‘Sandpaper’, which left fans immediately clamouring for the love-struck song to be made available.

Over the past few months, Zach has regularly posted atmospheric dive-bar photos to his Instagram stories with the caption, ‘The Great American Bar Scene’. In April, he confirmed this will indeed be the title of the new record, with the ‘I Remember Everything’ chart-topper accompanying the news with a snippet of another unreleased track, ‘28’. Both ‘28’ and ‘Like Ida’ have been uploaded to YouTube, so it feels likely the two songs will feature on The Great American Bar Scene.

Other recently teased tracks include ‘Oak Island’, which Zach performed the latter during his Greenville, South Carolina show in early May, prompting fans to assume it'll appear on the new album.

Although Zach Bryan teased a variety of unreleased songs in 2023 that didn't ultimately make the cut for his self-titled album, we're hoping recently shared demos such as ‘God is a Funny Man’, ‘Out in the Boons’ and ’Better Days’ end up on his 2024 project.

Endearingly, ‘God is a Funny Man‘ appears to have been written for Zach Bryan's girlfriend, Brianna LaPaglia, with the piano-driven track exploring a lighter, more innocent tone compared to the brooding, introspective ambience of Zach's 2023 record.

We're also keenly looking forward to hearing Zach Bryan's long-awaited John Mayer collaboration. The duo shared a photo from the studio back in October 2023, with Zach then briefly uploading a snippet of what fans believed to be their joint song towards the end of the year, before deleting the clip shortly after.

Another link-up fans have been calling for in recent weeks is Zach Bryan's duet with his fellow Oklahoman, John Moreland, seemingly entitled, ‘Memphis, The Blues’. Zach teased the evocative, world-weary track shortly before New Year's Eve, alongside a caption thanking John Moreland for his contribution to the song, “you’re a hero to okies like me @johnmoreland, thank you for joining me on this brother”.

One of the many reasons we love Zach Bryan is because he always keeps us on our toes, with the folk-leaning maverick just as likely to surprise fans with an album announcement tonight as he is to keep us guessing for the next few months.

In addition to honing his new record, Zach is readying his Belting Broncos live album, and as of yet, it's unclear as to whether he will release this before his next studio project.

Either way, new music from the ‘Deep Satin’ crooner is always a cause for celebration - and we're hoping we'll be treated to another single or two sooner rather than later.

For more on Zach Bryan, see below:

Featured photo by Laura Ord