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Zach Bryan has released a snippet of him performing Lana Del Rey's defining, multi-Platinum hit, ‘Video Games’.
The newly shared clip arrives as Zach continues to hone his eagerly awaited follow-up to American Heartbreak, with the new album expected to drop before the end of the summer.
Whenever taking on a cover of a song as widely known and loved as ‘Video Games’, it inevitably opens an artist up to criticism from fans of the iconic original.
However, Zach's heartfelt, stripped-back rendition of the moody track plays like a humble homage to Lana Del Rey's atmospheric version, and fans of both artists have been taking to the comments section to request an official release of the cover.
The song serves as both a tribute to the beauty of the little pleasures in a relationship, like watching your partner play their favourite ‘video games’, while being underpinned by a sense of melancholy as it dawns on the protagonist that the affection is somewhat one-sided.
Zach's acoustic performance builds out this introspective, longing tone that Lana laces into ‘Video Games’, with his voice carrying a feeling of wistfulness and heaviness as he approaches the chorus (“It's you, it's you, it's all for you / Everything I do / I tell you all the time”).
The new snippet is in the mould of the campfire videos of ‘Condemned’ and ’Heading South’ that Zach Bryan posted while he was still in the navy, which then propelled him into the public eye.
The ‘Something in the Orange’ hitmaker has built a reputation for his evocative songwriting, and he does not tend to include covers on his studio albums. It's therefore unlikely that Zach's rendition of ‘Video Games’ will make the cut for his upcoming project, Writers and Fighters, especially given the fact that he's seemingly already teased the 11-song tracklist.
Nonetheless, Zach may well have a surprise or two up his sleeve as he perfects his hotly anticipated new album, so we'll have to wait and see whether any covers pop up on the Writers and Fighters tracklist.
With Luke Combs’ celebrated cover of Tracy Chapman's ‘Fast Car’ recently hitting No. 1, an official Zach Bryan version of Lana Del Rey's ‘Video Games’ would surely be a hit with listeners.
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Featured photo by Laura Ord
