Is Zach Bryan Teasing a New Visual Album, ‘The American Underbelly’?

What is Zach Bryan up to?

The ‘Dawns’ singer-songwriter has shared a trio of trailers for what appear to be music videos for three unreleased songs, ‘Punch Drunk Jersey’, ‘Fifty Four Years’ and ‘Rockaway’.

In the caption, Bryan has hinted that these are each part of a larger, cohesive project titled The American Underbelly. For the ‘Punch Drunk Jersey’ snippet, for instance, the Oklahoma native has added the caption, “Punch Drunk Jersey...Part one’a ten of The American Underbelly”. ‘Fifty Four Years’ and ’Rockaway’ are listed as Part 2 and Part 3 respectively, with seven more tracks seemingly to come.

Bryan teased some lyrics to ‘Punch Drunk Jersey’ during a July Instagram post following his MetLife Stadium triple-header, which he enigmatically captioned, “Three punch drunk nights in New Jersey / Granddaddy worked a double til’ the day he died”.

The ‘Punch Drunk Jersey’ clip features a ruffled, agitated man sat at a bar who addresses the bartender, complaining, “F***in’ punch-drunk fighter over there trying to impress this girl with a f***in’ three-ball, man?” After continuing to express his frustration with the other man in the bar, he then declares, “I'm so sick of this s***, man. I'm leaving after tomorrow”, with an instrumental playing in the background.

We get a few more black-and-white shots of the man drinking and grumbling to the bartender, before he reiterates his desire to leave, and stumbles out of the bar onto the street.

In the second clip for ‘Fifty Four Years’, an elderly woman narrates as she sits alongside her husband, “He got sick a long time ago. A long time back. He had to stay in the house, he had a terrible go with pneumonia. Poor bastard could barely breathe. He drinks too much. Smokes too much. I think back to when we were young, and I realised those were all the things that made me fall in love with him. He's starting to forget a lot of things now. Names, birthdays, where he put his shoes”.

She movingly expands, “I wouldn't want to live a day on this rock without him”, with the couple then sweetly gushing, “I love you” to one another. This vignette follows a similar storyline to ’Billy Stay’, a fan-favourite from Bryan's American Heartbreak album.

We've always felt that ‘Billy Stay’ would make a powerful music video or short film, so it's great to see Bryan tackling the subject of dementia once again on ‘Fifty Four Years’.

For the third and final clip (so far), ‘Rockaway’, we see a woman talking on the phone from a balcony in New York. She idly chats with an unknown person, “Yeah, no, that's me...Yeah, no, I moved to the city”, before recalling how she ended up in the Big Apple, and how she has settled in, “We have our wine and coffee, we people-watch...I know my mom misses me, but I think she'd rather see me here”.

Shots of the woman chatting on the phone are interspersed with an old-timey POV from above of a street corner, which brings to mind classic films such as Singin’ in the Rain.

It has the feel of a set, which contrasts with the real, raw ambience of the rest of the clip, with Bryan utilising a jagged, jump-cut filming style to help create a sense of transience.

We heard a portion of ‘Rockaway’ in October 2024 - previously thought to be titled ‘Rockaway Beach’. This track was initially expected to feature on Bryan's January 2026 album, With Heaven On Top. It's unclear whether The American Underbelly is a record or film, or both, but judging by these clips, it feels like a visual album.

On the basis of Bryan's captions, it seems this will be 10 songs long, and could well be the project the ‘Something in the Orange’ crooner claimed he'd be recording during his two-week motorcycle trip earlier in the year. This was previously titled Motorbreath, and featured a Matthew McConaughey-voiced introduction.

However, with each of these three vignettes taking place in starkly different settings, it looks like The American Underbelly could be the updated title for this Motorbreath project, with Bryan filming each one in a different location on his road trip.

With some fans feeling down about the prospect of having to wait until January 9th before they can hear his next album, With Heaven On Top, it seems we might be getting another body of work from the country-folk titan a tad sooner than we thought.

There's no release date for The American Underbelly, and it's not yet evident which other songs will join ‘Punch Drunk Jersey’, ‘Fifty Four Years’ and ‘Rockaway’ on the project, but given the fact that these three short films seem fully mixed and mastered, we're hoping we might get to enjoy the full record in the coming weeks...

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