The Ridiculously Blasé Story of How Zach Bryan Created ‘Heading South’

Part of Zach Bryan's allure has always been his casual and seemingly off-hand brilliance. His first two albums, DeAnn and Elizabeth, were created with an unpolished, DIY feel that starkly contrasted the sleek, heavily produced sound emanating from Nashville.

It's the accidental and refreshingly unintentional nature of his success that has helped to build this rough-around-the-edges, man-of-the-people image around Bryan. It's long been a key part of his lore that he was just a kid from Oklahoma who wanted nothing more than to serve in the US Navy like his father and grandfather, but promptly blew up on social media thanks to ‘Heading South’. After spending eight years in the Navy, Bryan was honourably discharged in 2021.

Bryan's discography plays like a series of real-time vignettes and snapshots from his life, with blemishes left in that most would scrub out at the mastering stage. When listening to ’Condemned’, you'll hear Bryan struggle through the final chorus because he is laughing too hard, while on ’Dawns’ with Maggie Rogers, you can hear sirens drifting in from an open window and Bryan's chair rolling along the floor.

In a 2020 interview with Apple Music's Ward Guenther around the release of Bryan's fan-favourite Quiet, Heavy Dreams EP, the ‘Snow’ singer-songwriter reflects on the creation of ‘Heading South’, “I was heading into a hotel one night, and it popped in my head, you know? So I sat down - I was in Florida, I was sweating my butt off - and then I just wrote it all out in one go, and I was like, ‘Well, this will work!’ And I recorded it as fast as I could so I could go inside and go to sleep - I had to work the next day. Then, I woke up the next day, and people were like, ’Hey man, this is really good’. And then, like, two months later is when it took off”.

Bryan recalls penning ‘Heading South’ against the backdrop of his burgeoning fame, “When I wrote that song, I'd just released DeAnn, and there are a lot of mixed conversations that happen when something like that happens, because I didn't really want to be a musician. It was never really in my plans. I always just wanted to use it as an outlet. So I released DeAnn, and I had a lot of people who loved it, and I had a lot of people who were like, ’Who is this kid? Who does he think he is?’”

The ‘From Austin’ hitmaker chose to respond with the defiant ‘Heading South’, a song that sounds like a rousing anthem for everyone who's been told their dreams are too big.

Bryan reflects, “That's why I wrote ‘Heading South’. I was like, ‘Man, all of us are just out here trying to be something and become something’. Every single one of us has this dream in their head of who they want to be. And I just kind of wanted to write a song that encapsulated [the message]: ‘You can, you know, and you're able, so you should’. Yeah, a lot of people thought that song was about me or anyone in particular. And it wasn't”, concluding, “I thought it was a good idea, you know, because everyone just needs a bit of encouragement sometimes”.

Although, as always, Bryan's lyrics on ‘Heading South’ leave room for interpretation, the ‘South’ that he champions as a promised land acts as a metaphor for his dream. He implores his listeners to go out there and storm towards their own ‘South’, and to refuse to allow any naysayers or detractors to get in their way.

More broadly, ‘Heading South’ has become a battle-cry for the outsiders and the misunderstood, with attendees always screaming the lyric, “They'll never understand that boy and his kind / And all they comprehend is a f***ing dollar sign” at Bryan's shows.

The track would become the keystone for his sophomore project, Elisabeth, and hinted at the angsty spirit that would underpin later hits such as ‘Revival’, ‘Open the Gate’, ‘Quittin’ Time’, ‘American Nights’, ‘Heavy Eyes’ and ‘Cold Damn Vampires’. At the time of writing, that initial acoustic video of ‘Heading South’, which Bryan recorded at his Navy barracks, has 34 million views, and the song has amassed a staggering 905 million streams on Spotify alone. It won't be long before ‘Heading South’ joins ‘Something in the Orange’ with RIAA Diamond status.

With Bryan preparing to release his sixth studio album, With Heaven On Top, on January 9th, we suspect he'll keep us guessing with more of the experimental production and lyrical left-turns that have permeated his previous two records, The Great American Bar Scene and Zach Bryan. Nonetheless, at the heart of this new project, there will be the raw, sincere songwriting and enchantingly real storytelling that first introduced a sweaty, aviation ordnanceman to the world in 2019.

For the full lyrics to Zach Bryan's ‘Heading South’, see below:

“Was a boy who was a dreamer, and he flew so high and proud
In a world full of people out to cut his young ass down
No one ever understood a single word he said
And they cast him to the wolves when he wasn't well and fed

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Boys, we've got a riser, a riser in our midst
He will get the last laugh if it's the last thing he did
And he used to roll around in that red dirt mud
But now he's skippin' town, and that riser's out for blood

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Don't stop goin', goin' south
'Cause they'll let you play your music real damn loud
Don't stop headin', headin' south
'Cause they will understand the words that are pourin' from your mouth

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Then that boy, he called his daddy to tell him what he did
As the masses screamed the lyrics of a messed-up kid
And then he told that old man he was never coming back
To be cut down again in a town like that

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Then he surely came to learn people come to watch you fall
But he's out to make a name and a fool out of 'em all
They'll never understand that boy and his kind
And all they comprehend is a f***ing dollar sign

-

So don't stop goin', goin' south
'Cause they'll let you play your music real damn loud
Don't stop headin', headin' south
'Cause they will understand the words that are pourin' from your mouth

-

Don't stop goin', goin' south
They will understand the words that are pourin' from your mouth
Don't stop goin', goin' south
'Cause they'll let you scream your music real damn loud”

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