Zach Top

One Liner: Wildly great voice and a sound like the 90's best

Wikipedia Genre: No Wikipedia - country, bluegrass
Home: Nashville (via Sunnyside, Washington)

Saturday

Thoughts:  This makes me inexplicably happy.  His voice is liquid honey, and these tunes sound like he very easily could have been a contemporary of Vince Gill, Keith Whitley, and Clint Black back when they were hitmaking machines.

Top grew up on a ranch in Washington State, near Sunnyside, Washington.  He created a bluegrass band with his siblings when he was seven, and then as a teen he joined a band called North Country in Seattle, before later joining a different band called Modern Tradition.  I don't know either of those bands, but I assume they must have been relatively good, because he ended up heading to Nashville and popping out a #1 single on the Bluegrass charts.  I read a quote from him where he said he figured out how to turn "ranch songs" into radio hits, and part of his craft is to keep working on a song until he thinks it is something that King George would cut.  "There's The Sun," his top streamer, definitely fits that bill.  1.5 million streams.

A little bit cheesy, but a billion percent authentically classic neotraditional country music.  A million percent could hear King George doing that one.  I love that a 24 year old kid is digging back in to that sound.

Not much else out there that I can tell you about him - no Wikipedia, no interviews on the first page of Google results - just kind of the stock history that I provided above that his agents must provide to every outlet.  I did see that Parker McCollum gave him a shout out on Twitter.  Limited musical output as well, so far, with one album - 2022's Zach Top - and then a handful of singles.  I like the Buffet-vibe of "Busy Doin' Nothin'" and "Bad Luck" is pretty classic.  But, I am going to give you the classic "work's over let's get drunk" vibes of "Cold Beer and Country Music," a 2022 single.  1.1 million streams.

Just leave me alone so I can jam music and crank beers!  Stop trying to get into my pants, lady!  Nothing groundbreaking or novel in his stuff, but between his top-shelf voice and the classic vibes here, I am really liking this guy.