Zach Bryan- With Heaven On Top
Label: Warner
Producer: Zach Bryan
While 2025 became the first year in four that didn’t witness a new Zach Bryan album release, it nevertheless proved to be a significant year in the singer-songwriter’s journey as the decade’s most unlikely superstar. Last spring, after much chatter that Bryan would be leaving the major label system behind him, he re-signed with Warner Records for a lucrative $350 million, an agreement that also included the sale of his entire publishing catalog. A few months later, Bryan played to more than 112,000 fans at Michigan Stadium, breaking George Strait’s 2024 record for the largest attendance at a ticketed concert in United States history. True to his entire artistic identity, Bryan’s sixth studio effort, With Heaven On Top is another effort that refuses to cowtow to any mainstream convention, playing authentically and seemingly unaware of Bryan’s box-office achievements outside the studio. After all, it’s that unflappable independent musical spirit that made Bryan a superstar in the first place, and it is what will keep him that as long as he chooses.
At an enormous twenty-five tracks, Heaven is Bryan’s third studio release to reach or exceed the double-album mark. This trend of excess in the viral music climate of the 2020s is one that Bryan himself inarguably helped usher in, and it’s one that has led to increasing debates of quantity over quality in the popular music spectrum, as listeners find themselves fatigued in a label system merely obsessed with maximizing streams. And no, Bryan’s catalog is not necessarily immune to the fatigue factor; there’s a reason that his 2023 self-titled (and much more concise) album is the selection of his that I return to most frequently. With that said, there is a reason that Bryan was one of the pillars in this movement of extended albums, and why he continues to succeed where many peers like Morgan Wallen fail: he’s just so damn consistently prolific. And that’s something that doesn’t change throughout With Heaven On Top. While he could have easily gone the preferred route of Charley Crockett by returning to the culture of the 60s and 70s by dividing his music into multiple albums throughout a single calendar year, the biggest concern here is not the confines of the music, but the quality of it all. And in that respect, Bryan remains unquestionably on top of his game as a composer and storyteller.
One of the reasons Bryan releases like With Heaven On Top succeed where records like I’m the Problem fail can be attributed to the fact that, despite the unflinching loyalty to his indie signatures I mentioned earlier, Bryan still isn’t afraid to subtly evolve his sound when the setting and song are both right. This evolution appears prominently throughout this record with the added presence of soul-tinged brass sections on a wealth of the album’s tracks. I’ve seen some overzealous fans cite this production choice as the “sell-out” moment we’ve supposedly feared would inevitably appear as Bryan’s popularity sky-rocketed. That’s ridiculous and overstated, and frankly, as a well-documented sucker for horn sections, these flourishes are my favorite components of Heaven. This stylistic choice is not over-produced, but rather tastefully interwoven into moments like “Appetite”, “Say Why”, “Santa Fe”, “Slicked Black”, and “Dry Deserts”, which easily rank among the most memorably resonant anthems of the record, and surefire new staples in Bryan’s epic concert sets.
It’s this added sonic flavor that not only makes a record this large more digestible and sustainable, but it also further elevates the companion tracks that remain more deeply rooted in Bryan’s stripped, country-folk trappings. I’m talking plentiful moments like “Runny Eggs”, “Skin”, “DeAnn’s Denim”, “Drowning”, “Cannonball”, “Aeroplane”, “South and Pine”, lead single “Plastic Cigarette”, the title track and various others. These are the primal moments that continue to sublimely showcase the ultimate bedrock of Zach Bryan’s brilliant emergence as one of his generation’s great talents: his songwriting. Like the very best country, rock, and folk poets before him, he continues to exhibit a innate ability to immediately paint the most vivid scenes, stories, and characters through rustic but deceptive simplicity and raw, unfiltered emotion.
The stirring power and striking stories of Zach Bryan’s music continue to register on a rarified scale reserved for the most gifted artists. And so long as his songs remain as uniformly strong and resonant as they do throughout With Heaven On Top, it won’t matter if his albums play for eight minutes, or eighty. They’ll continue to be worth the investment of both the time and emotional variety. He raises the stakes for 2026 record-making right out of the gates.
Track Listing:
- “Down, Down, Stream” (Zach Bryan)
- “Runny Eggs” (Bryan)
- “Appetite” (Bryan)
- “DeAnn’s Denim” (Bryan)
- “Say Why” (Bryan)
- “Drowning” (Bryan)
- “Santa Fe” (Bryan)
- “Skin” (Bryan)
- “Dry Deserts” (Bryan)
- “Bad News” (Bryan)
- “South and Pine” (Bryan)
- “Cannonball” (Bryan)
- “Slicked Back” (Bryan)
- “Anyways” (Bryan)
- “If They Come Lookin'” (Bryan)
- “Rivers and Creeks” (Bryan)
- “Plastic Cigarette” (Bryan)
- “You Can Still Come Home” (Bryan)
- “Aeroplane” (Bryan)
- “Always Willin'” (Bryan)
- “Miles” (Bryan)
- “All Good Things Past” (Bryan)
- “Camper” (Bryan)
- “Sundown Girls” (Bryan)
- “With Heaven On Top” (Bryan)
The 706 
Leave a comment