Zach Bryan – With Heaven on Top

With Heaven on Top isn’t an album driven by polished vocals and studio mixing, but rather by confession and intense lyricism. Across 25 tracks, Zach Bryan continues to write as though he’s thinking out loud, letting moments of clarity and contradiction sit side by side. This release’s strength lies in its refusal to summarise or simplify the experiences it documents. Bryan’s words value honesty over resolution, which is abundantly clear in this record.

Lyrically, Bryan operates at a level of specificity that few of his peers in the modern-day country music scene can match. His writing shines when it transforms deeply personal pain into something tactile and immediately recognisable. One of the most striking moments arrives in DeAnn’s Denim, in which he refers to alcoholism not as something inherited through genes, but through his mother’s jeans, painting a devastatingly simple metaphor that reframes addiction as something worn, absorbed, and passed down through proximity rather than biology. It’s a line that lingers precisely because it feels unforced, almost conversational, yet loaded with meaning.

Standing out among the expansive tracklist, Skin captures the intense emotions that can follow the end of a relationship. Rather than romanticising heartbreak, the song sits with discomfort, the instinct to pull away from the memory of intimacy, expressed through the permanency of a tattoo. It’s sonically brutal, reflecting the kind of intense emotion that seemingly references his most recent breakup and the harshness that came with that kind of love loss.

Another significant moment on the album comes from the track, Bad News, which takes on added significance when considered alongside Bryan’s background in the United States military. The song captures his discomfort as the values he once served are challenged by what he now sees unfolding at home, particularly in relation to ICE and its impact on ordinary people. Rather than arriving at a clear stance, Bryan lingers in uncertainty, questioning whether these realities are truly as they appear or simply more “bad news” to be processed and moved past, a doubt that sits at the heart of the track.

The album concluding with the title track, With Heaven on Top, feels like a natural and deeply considered ending. After so much emotional unrest, it offers something close to peace, not the certainty of having everything figured out, but the acceptance of where things stand.

With Heaven on Top may be demanding in length and subject matter, but it rewards those who are listening with intention. Bryan clearly isn’t asking for sympathy or absolution within his lyrics, only understanding. Throughout the record’s tracklist, it becomes clear that he has delivered a release that feels grounded, reflective, and unmistakably sincere, which has proved once again that his greatest strength lies not in spectacle but in the soul of his songwriting.