‘Rattlesnake’ by Jack Van Cleaf & Zach Bryan

January 29, 2025 9:32 am GMT

Jack Van Cleaf & Zach Bryan - ‘Rattlesnake’

Label: Dualtone Music Group

Release Date: January 29th, 2025

Album: TBC*

Producers: Jack Van Cleaf, Zach Bryan, Eddie Spear & Alberto Sewald

Songwriters: Jack Van Cleaf & Maxx Marshall

The Background:

Folk prodigy Jack Van Cleaf stormed onto the scene in 2022 with the beautifully poetic and profound ‘Rattlesnake’. The sparse, wistful offering has since amassed over 12 million Spotify streams, cementing Van Cleaf as a future star of the genre.

Zach Bryan paid homage to the intricate track by covering ‘Rattlesnake’ on his socials, which laid the foundation for Bryan and Van Cleaf to team up to record a revamped rendition of the song in 2025. It sticks closely to the original, with additional production from Eddie Spear and Bryan himself. Zach Bryan and Jack Van Cleaf used the same musicians that contributed to the 2022 original, and recorded their reimagined take on ‘Rattlesnake’ at New York's iconic Electric Lady Studios.

The Sound:

The new composition of ‘Rattlesnake’ feels more like a tribute to Jack Van Cleaf's original, rather than an attempt to give the track a starkly different sound or feel.

There is the notable and welcome addition of horns - which Zach Bryan has been increasingly incorporating into his music of late - while Bryan's guttural, charismatic delivery injects a sense of weariness and weight into the song. The progression is equally as emphatic as it is on the 2022 rendition, with ‘Rattlesnake’ building from a stripped-back introduction into a momentous, rousing crescendo.

The Meaning:

“Losing touch in Tennessee

Freedom’s got the best of me

Goddamn my opportunities

Goddamn this easy living

Gasping for the mountain air

Crawling up the campus stairs

My throne is an electric chair

I’m stunned with indecision”

‘Rattlesnake’ is intentionally enigmatic with its specifics, with Jack Van Cleaf and Maxx Marshall favouring visceral metaphors and striking imagery over clarity and lucidity. Generally speaking, ‘Rattlesnake’ finds a protagonist navigating the various challenges and existential questions of his twenties, with the songwriters deftly capturing the feeling of trying to pinpoint and construct one's evolving identity.

The reference to Tennessee seems to be largely autobiographical, with Jack Van Cleaf studying at Nashville's Belmont University. He expresses a deep-seated yearning to experience the freedom and healing of being out in the middle of nature, seemingly feeling frustrated and ‘out of touch’ while spending time in the city.

There's a recurring theme of being aware of one's privileges, and perhaps even holding onto guilt because of these opportunities, but feeling suffocated by the numbness of his “easy living”. Van Cleaf depicts his “throne” of privilege as an “electric chair”, framing his uninspiring and stiflingly comfortable lifestyle as a death sentence.

“Pray for upgrades on my soul

Tearing through an open road

Questioning my moral code

And screaming at a windshield

Knowing better all along

Knowing all I know is wrong

Throwing up my alcohol

Am I making this a big deal?”

Throughout ‘Rattlesnake’, there's a tension between portrayals of oppressive modernity and simplified ways of life. We get the digitised imagery of seeking an “upgrade” on one's soul, which juxtaposes the natural euphoria of driving down an open road.

The idea of questioning and tussling with self-doubt continues in this verse, with Van Cleaf also sprinkling in familiar post-collegiate vignettes, such as getting too drunk.

“Oh my skull is just a big white house

To some punk-ass kids from out of town

They stay up late and talk real loud

And sometimes I feel like kicking them out”

Here, Van Cleaf and Bryan liken their heads to houses that get vandalised by out-of-town youths, seemingly conveying the constant noise and chatter they feel in their minds.

“Self-absorbed most of the time

Obsessed with sex and suicide

The dreams of Texas girls gone by I lie like California

Stumbling over all the states

Mumbling like a basket case,

“Oh, love is like a rattlesnake

Before it bites it tries to warn ya””

The narrator touches on his destructive tendencies and obsessions in this verse, before painting a picture of a nomad that can't seem to settle down as he ‘stumbles’ across the states. Then, we get the elegant titular lyric, in which Van Cleaf compares love to a rattlesnake, in that both try to give you advance warning before harming you. It's an evocative image, and seemingly nods to the way in which people can often feel that a relationship is faltering before the fatal blow arrives.

“But my heart is just a little boy

Holding hands like brand new toys

Drunk on freedom, stuck on choice

Just cooing for the rattle’s noise”

After the somewhat negative self-portrayal we've had of our protagonist so far, it's movingly endearing to now hear them describing themselves as “a little boy” at heart. This hints at the idea that we all have an ‘inner child’, before Van Cleaf transitions from the ‘rattlesnake’ to the comparatively innocent sound of a baby's ‘rattle’.

“Out of town and two klicks past

I found a Western diamondback

It blocks my self-destructive path

I laugh, it shakes its tail

Says, “If you hurt all of your friends

And disappear around the bend

You bet you come right back again

And try to love, though you may fail”

Rather than being a solitary, fleeting symbol, the ‘rattlesnake’ returns as Van Cleaf and Bryan approach the end of the track. The narrator crosses paths with a Western diamondback rattlesnake, before he introduces a psychedelic element into the story as the reptile chuckles at him, before offering some advice to the protagonist about being kind to his friends and the inevitability of seeking out love in life.

What have Jack Van Cleaf and Zach Bryan said about ‘Rattlesnake’?

When announcing the duet, Zach Bryan took to Instagram to toast Jack Van Cleaf's ‘Rattlesnake’ as “one of the best written songs of all time”. Bryan reflected, “to become the best of friends with people through music in the city. think that may be the point of all this...Jack & me re-recorded one of the best written songs of all time (jack is a genius) and it’s out on the 29th of January hope u guys listen to it”.