“Coming For Your Writers Rooms Nashville”: Zach Bryan Shares Hilarious Response to AI Country Song Going No. 1

Zach Bryan's got jokes, y'all.

There's been an air of despondence hanging over the country music world of late, in light of the news that an AI country song, ‘Walk My Walk’ by Breaking Rust, had somehow managed to reach No. 1 on Billboard's all-genre Digital Song Sales chart.

Bryan, however, is seemingly brushing off the idea that we should be worrying about what this means for the future of the genre, instead making light of the dystopian situation.

The Oklahoma native has taken to socials to share a brief snippet of an acoustic track. We've grown accustomed to Bryan's weighty, introspective offerings over the years, with the country-folk titan often debuting clips and demos via Instagram and TikTok as a means of testing out the response before dropping them.

As the intricate strum of the guitar echoed out and Bryan prepared to sing, we expected to hear some deep, poignant lyrics - but instead, hilariously, it turned out he'd been baiting us. Bryan croons, “Well the only AI I know is / Ay, I need a beer to go”.

He then can't help but start chuckling, before ending the video. We imagine, of course, that this isn't part of an actual song, rather, it's just an amusing piece of wordplay.

Breaking Rust's success has sparking a series of heated debates across the country music landscape. While various legislation and measures have been put in place preventing the use of AI to imitate existing artists, the rules are a little less clear when it comes to the utilisation of this technology to create brand new songs. Spotify recently unveiled an expansive series of regulations, which will highlight when AI has been used in the creation of a song through the official credits.

It feels like the chart-topping popularity of ‘Walk My Walk’ and numerous other Breaking Rust tracks, such as ‘Livin’ On Borrowed Time’, could accelerate the shift towards rawer, stripped-back country and folk music - which Bryan is currently the face of. This DIY aesthetic is, in many ways, the antithesis of polished, algorithmic AI music, and it seems Bryan's caption to his tongue-in-cheek video - “Coming for your writers rooms Nashville” - could be a veiled reference to this.

Nashville has long received flak for their “writers room” methodology, which can often lead to six, seven and often even more writers credited on a single song. While many celebrate this spirit of collaboration, some argue that this dilutes the emotional resonance and intimacy you get when listening to a song with one or two writers. Bryan, for instance, pens virtually every track in his discography alone.

Either way, it's a fun, playful video that brings some welcome levity to a situation that many are lamenting as a troubling sign of the times. Who knows, maybe Bryan will one day build out the idea into a full-blown song, called ‘A-I Need a Beer’...

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Featured photo by Laura Ord