Zach Bryan's New Album 2024 - ‘The Great American Bar Scene’: Timeline and Lyrics

When it comes to modern album rollouts, artists seem to be almost unanimously eschewing the traditional, single-by-single release strategy in favour of showering listeners with a virtually endless stream of new songs, snippets and teasers.

The figurehead of this wave of artists striving for both quantity and quality is Zach Bryan, who sometimes seems to tease a new unreleased song every single day.

As a result, it's perhaps unsurprising - yet nonetheless exciting - that, less than a year on, Zach Bryan has already released the follow up to his widely lauded 2023 self-titled album in The Great American Bar Scene.

Zach confirmed that, after a series of special previews taking place across 23 bars in the US, that the album would be released July 4th.

Before the album's release, Bryan dropped two stellar singles from the record; ‘Pink Skies’ - which originally went viral under the speculative title, ’Eulogy’, via TikTok - and ‘Purple Gas’ a duet written and performed with alt-country up-and-comer, Noeline Hofmann. Hofmann was a previous guest on his much-loved Belting Broncos video series, where she performed the song solo.

In a post on X, Zach Bryan revealed he had a song called ‘The Great American Bar Scene’ on the record. Bryan revealed the song to be the title-track for the keenly awaited project in April. In January, he uploaded a snippet of another original called ‘Sandpaper’. The song was immediately rumoured to contain a blockbuster feature from Bruce Springsteen, who joined Zach and Maggie Rogers for an electric performance of ’Revival’ in Brooklyn. This was confirmed upon the album's release.

Zach uploaded two further unreleased tracks, ‘28’ and ‘Like Ida’ to YouTube, The Great American Bar Scene. Another teased track was ‘Oak Island’, which Zach performed during his Greenville, South Carolina show in early May.

Although Bryan teased a variety of unreleased songs in 2023 that didn't ultimately make the cut for his self-titled album, demos such as ‘Funny Man’, 'Boons’ and ’Better Days’ all ended up on this 2024 project.

Endearingly, ‘Funny Man‘ appears to have been written for Zach Bryan's girlfriend, Brianna LaPaglia, with the piano-driven track exploring a lighter, more innocent tone compared to the brooding, introspective ambience of Zach's 2023 record. LaPaglia spoke in her podcast about how Zach has written songs about their relationship for the project.

On July 3, Bryan released a preface to the album on social media, within that sharing the liner notes for the record. The liner notes confirmed that not only would John Mayer, Bruce Springsteen, Noeline Hofmann and John Moreland be appearing, but Bryan Adams would, at the very least, have a writing credit on two of the songs, entitled 'Bass Boat' and 'The Way Back'.

Zach Bryan's collaboration with John Mayer has been in the pipeline since the duo shared a photo from the studio back in October 2023, with Zach then briefly uploading a snippet of what fans believed to be their joint song towards the end of the year, before deleting the clip shortly after. As expected, Mayer guests on 'Better Days', which the pair performed together during one of Zach's shows in LA back in June.

Another collaboration that Zach had teased on social media that appears on the record is a duet with his fellow Oklahoman, John Moreland, entitled ‘Memphis, The Blues’. Zach teased the evocative, world-weary track shortly before New Year's Eve, alongside a caption thanking John Moreland for his contribution to the song, “you’re a hero to okies like me @johnmoreland, thank you for joining me on this brother”.

With the release of The Great American Bar Scene, Zach took to social media to share his thoughts on the momentous day; "this record tested the hell out of me and I failed most days it did but we finally made it. I’m glad this chapter happened but I’m more glad that it’s coming to an end. It’s out everywhere at midnight on the east coast but I imagine I don’t make it that late. Happy Fourth of July to the best people in the world. How lucky are we?"

For more on Zach Bryan, see below: