“The last ten years I’ve tried my best to share the human experience, ” Zach Bryan wrote on an Instagram post the night of January 9, shortly after releasing his sixth studio album “With Heaven on Top”. In this 25 track album, alongside a raw, acoustic version, Bryan displays some of his most heartfelt, relatable songs. This album shows him humanizing his music and narrowing down his diverse audience into one shared human experience- an  experience of heartbreak, grief, turmoil, and everything in between. This album is one of the most cohesive, emotional albums I’ve listened to and I think Bryan did a wonderful job creating both an acoustic and produced version with a comforting, homey feel. 

In true Zach Bryan fashion (at least since 2022 with American Heartbreak), he opens “With Heaven on Top” with a spoken poem. This poem tells the story of him having a conversation with a man who owned his New York City apartment before him. This poem compares the passage of time to the flow of water. He illustrates the inability to physically hold water, but touches on the fact that it is a formless thing that runs through and shapes a person. It displays Bryan’s masterful lyricism and introduces the tone for the rest of the album; a balance between honoring the past and being able to move on from it. 

Looking at this album as a whole, the most obvious hits, at least from the perspective of popularity, are “Appetite” and “Say Why”, both with upbeat backtracks and catchy choruses. These are also two of the most streamed songs on the album, alongside slightly slower songs “Plastic Cigarette” and “DeAnn’s Denim”. 

One of the most beautiful things about this album, and Bryan’s music as a whole, is how seamlessly he is able to mix together complex lyrics with seemingly chirpy songs. “Appetite”, for example, appears a big-band, upbeat country song with electric guitar and lively horns, but the song actually presents a protagonist, likely Bryan himself, feeling stuck performing for “bloody money.” Bryan also alludes to his past reliance on alcohol, and the fear that having children would mean banishing them to the same jaded life as his own, fearing they would “stir s— up and start a fight” and “work themselves up an appetite” as he does by being an artist. This song is also notably different from most of the songs in Bryan’s discography, proving that he can step outside his comfort zone while keeping his storytelling complex and also making hits. 

“DeAnn’s Denim” is by far my favorite song of this album. This song strikingly resembles “Dear Miss”, a single that was released in February of 2025 and is a presumed apology for past actions and imperfections. At first I wasn’t completely sure about the near parallel chords and feels of these two songs, but as I listened more, their similarities added more depth to both of the songs for me. “DeAnn’s Denim” is a perfect example of Bryan’s ability to use his experiences in order to create complex songs. Like many of his past songs, this one is a tribute to his mother, DeAnn, who passed away in 2016. Bryan has made a point to consistently nod to his mother’s impact on his life throughout his entire career, the most notable being his entire debut album being devoted to and named after her. In this song specifically, he makes a play on words  by asking the listener if they “are strong enough to stay away from family genes, ‘cause Deann’s denim was a stubborn thing,” referencing the stubborn traits and expectations he still has from his mother and explaining the conflict between trying to move past these expectations while simultaneously honoring his mothers legacy. 

Probably the most anticipated song on this album before release was “Bad News”. In early October, Bryan released a teaser of this song on social media and it gained a lot of attention because of its lyric nodding to current events in America. The song itself says “ICE is gonna come bust down your door” and even goes on to reference “the fading of the red, white, and blue,” which is also what Bryan captioned his Instagram post when he first released the snippet of the song. Despite being a Navy Veteran, Bryan has been consistently politically neutral for his entire career and many fans were surprised that he spoke out about immigration raids and ICE. This song got immediate attention from the Trump Administration and Bryan reinforced his neutrality directly after, saying “Left wing or right wing we’re all one bird and American. To be clear I’m on neither of these radical sides.”  I could definitely see this song become a country classic in the next couple decades, especially because of its reference to contemporary events that we see in dozens of country hits. 

My one critique of this album is that it does feel a little overstuffed with 24 complete songs (as well as the poem) and during the first couple of listens, this album felt a little repetitive to me. I think that sometimes Bryan’s music scares away new listeners because the songs can sound very similar to each other. It took me a while to be able to distinguish between the songs on this album. 

Overall, this album proved even further all that Zach Bryan is capable of. With Heaven on Top is chalk-full of expert songwriting, catchy tunes, and complex narratives that make the album as beautiful as any fan could’ve expected. In Bryan’s words, “Songs are living things, they want to be free and these free’d me.”