On Zach Bryan, meeting the moment, AI Plankton covers and other stuff I liked this summer
Long time no write
They said I'm a wanna-be cowboy from a cutthroat town
With tattooed skin and nobody around
"Your songs sound the same, you'll never make a name for yourself"
I’ve been working, and I’ve been summering, which is why I haven’t been Substacking. But I have an itch again thanks to Zach Bryan.
The jolt isn’t even so much from the music. Which is very good. Everything is aced. The album art is the stuff of classics. The tracklist is a perfect length for a brisk drive in and out of a major city or up a long rural road. And Zach Bryan is going to write Zach Bryan songs. Our newly-crowned cool-kid-country king opened the album with a one-minute-and-47-second poem and he’s cruising to the No. 1 record in America.
So I could very well just wax about how pretty East Side of Sorrow is.
Instead, I’m writing about how this appears to be a, to borrow a Bill Simmonsism, “moment.” Bryan is transforming from a guy to A Guy. And there’s just something to be said for the select few people who are given that chance, slathered over a silver plate, and devour it.
It’s pretty clear he’s met this moment, particularly during a time when adjacent music has become a political tool thanks to the red-beard guy who really hates fudge rounds (a snack that only contains 310 calories, hardly the least healthy junk food in existence).
Basically, Bryan’s rise almost feels preordained. But authentically preordained, not in a way to the point that industry plant accusations are lobbed or you’ll see him dressed as a Monster Cowboy on the Masked Singer (although that would be very funny). Instead, he’s just one of those people who creates things, and people instantly care.
It’s funny, because it comes on the heels of another moment met, in a very different avenue, when a couple of weeks back the rainbow-haired beanpole Sean O’Malley won the UFC bantamweight crown.
A big underdog to elite grappler and long-reigning champ Aljamain Sterling, O’Malley has faced the UFC’s version of industry plant claims, as detractors nitpicked his strength of schedule and accused the promotion of giving the TikTok, Twitch-streaming Gen-Z fan-favorite an easy ride to reach a new demographic.
And there was some to a lot of truth to that. But, like Bryan, O’Malley is also just flat-out good, and is touched with that tinge of predetermination. And more than anything, there was a constantly building but turbulent hurricane of hype that followed him since Snoop Dogg first called the win that earned him a ticket to the UFC in Dana White’s deranged American Idol-esque entry-level show.
He knocked out Sterling. Despite nursing a bad rib injury throughout his whole training camp. Hype fulfilled. Stardom awaits.
O’Malley isn’t quite as lovable as Bryan. He’s said some pretty gross stuff in the past. He’s much brasher—although that’s almost a prerequisite in his field and his specific demographic of fans. But it’s still difficult for me not to be in awe of people who can feel the pressure points pushing and pulling from every which way and still manage to do something special.
There are so many people who go in the opposite direction at those points. And even more so, most people never even reach the inflection where the moment occurs. I’ll probably never have that sort of nexus, at least in the public sphere. I probably don’t even want to. But I’ll enjoy the successes vicariously.
And it’s a shame Sheryl Crow isn’t playing his DC show. I can’t afford a flight to Atlanta.
Besides this stuff, here’s a playlist, plus some other things I’ve enjoyed this summer.
AI Plankton covers of butt rock songs
Listen. I get it. It’s uncouth to enjoy artificial intelligence stuff. I’m aware. And some of it is pretty gross, ranging from how scarily uncanny they are (like this Phoebe Bridgers Smash Mouth cover with 77 views) to how absolutely hilariously terrible (this Bruce Springsteen Drops of Jupiter that sounds like the Three Doors Down guy).
However, I think the moral bargain I’ve made is that I can listen to the seemingly most popular iteration of these: Plankton covering butt rock, emo, post-grunge. I spent a whole evening going down the rabbit hole and inundating my group chat with links. This Hotelier one had me in tears, as did Sheldon’s gorgeous version of Shinedown).
But of course, the piece de resistance is him covering an American songbook standard.
That movie about the nuclear bomb
That’s right: the 1964 Sidney Lumet film Fail Safe. What a damn 1 hour and 52 minutes. The premise is basically if a Seinfeld conflict was transposed to involve nuclear weapons. There’s a point in the movie where Henry Fonda has a look that screams “Why did I take this job” that might be the most honest presidential expression put to film.
Oppenheimer was pretty good too.
Non-Spotify Hop Along songs
Hop Along is my favorite band ever. It’s in my Twitter/X/whatever bio. But I do have one axe to grind. I don’t know a lick about music rights/distribution. But Frances Quinlan has to figure out how to get the band’s early, even freakier and folkier stuff on Spotify/Bandcamp. It’s selfish and lazy, but whatever. I’ve stumbled across so many diamonds, from Cow Eyes to Second Name to Green Water. Bay Area Baby is incredible. Do I really have to download the Soundcloud app?
Ben Gibbard’s appearance on Effectively Wild
I just love people who love things that aren’t what we love them for. Ben Gibbard is just a ginormous baseball nerd, and it’s glorious. As Ben Lindbergh jokes on this podcast, the man went from New York Times and Billboard press interviews to a Fangraphs MLB pod. It’s a very charming appearance, with Gibbard namedropping old Mariners relievers like Brandon Morrow (I wonder if he plays Immaculate Grid) and hyping the Cincinnati Reds’ young core. Everyone knows he’s into this stuff, but it doesn’t make it any less charming. There’s also some pretty cool reflection on being a guy who has made music that means a lot to a lot of people and the weight or lack thereof that comes with it. I skipped to the interview portion because I didn’t want to risk hearing Ben and Meg Rowley talk about the Red Sox.
Kevin Costner’s movie stardom
For reasons still not known to me, I decided to run through Kevin Costner’s 90s filmography and watch as much as I could. The startling revelation: most of his movies were not very good (the one exception: No Way Out, a movie with a truly batshit twist that drops in the final 30 seconds). But damn, you can see why studios just kept saying yes to him making 3-hour movies with weird plots: the guy oozes charisma and movie magic that feels like it’s sorely missing today. I think his modern corollary is probably Bradley Cooper, who might make better movies but have a little less of that “it.”
And some rapid-fire things
-Being in the ocean
-Don DeLillo
-Celsius energy drinks
-Crappy Dunkin Donuts (the good ones are bad)
-Underdog fantasy drafts
-Lamb saag
-Immaculate Grid
-Paul Schrader movies
-The Grimace milkshake
-Rec league adult kickball
Things I didn’t like this summer
-Bruce Springsteen moving his show to a date I can’t make
-Don DeLillo forcing me to realize I suck at writing
-The Red Sox wasting my time
-Driving in major cities
-Cold brew season approaching its end
-College football realignment
-Losing a lot of games in rec league adult kickball