Issue # 103: The Country Song of Summer 2025 Sounds Like It's from 1995

On Zach Top and "Good Times & Tan Lines"

Did anybody see Zach Top coming? A neo-traditionalist who the internet sometimes thinks is Alan Jacksons son (he is not), who went from virtually unknown to the top of the country charts in what felt like overnight, selling out his tour the second it went on sale and scoring a number one song, “I Never Lie,” that sounds so twangy it’s nearly shocking when sandwiched between Jelly Roll and…probably another Jelly Roll song?

Photo: Citizen Kane Wayne

Yes, Top’s success is surprising, especially when he’s competing for the same airwaves that, as Natalie and I have realized, basically build entire hours of radio with Jelly songs and “Morgan Wallen Double-Wides.” But there’s also a big part of me that is continually amused when the world discovers that, yes, people do like country music that sounds very country. Have we not realized this by now? You might not realize it by listening to country radio, which basically exists on songs made to play while darting swinging colostomy bags at Jason Aldean’s. But, when given the chance, people like fiddles, they like steel guitar, they like all of these things - it just hasn’t been what makes tourists spend money on Lower Broadway for the past two decades. With the success of Top, is that poised to change?

What Top does isn’t revolutionary in nature, but it is revolutionary in context: and that Nashville rallied behind it, probably the most revolutionary of all. And though not traditionalists (whatever that means) it was artists like Sturgill Simpson, Tyler Childers and Margo Price who created the climate for Top to exist because they proved the appetite is there (and credit, for sure, to Midland, too), not people like Jon Pardi who pretend to release more country-leaning albums and then basically just made bro-country with a fiddle. Though I am sure that dude is taking credit.

But you can’t be all hat, no cattle. Top works because he has the voice and writing chops to back up a 90s country approach, and he doesn’t just seem like he’s engaging in throwback country cosplay: there’s a tenderness to what he does, as evidenced by my favorite song of his, “Use Me,” which is essentially about indulging in a one night stand to fill, in the most ephemeral of ways, a nagging void. Watch his performance at the ACMs, and I think you’ll fall for him too. His lyrics don’t feel like a pastiche of vintage imagery, and they’re sexy too (the kind of girl in “That’s the Kind of Woman I Like” doesn’t seem like she’s required to be submissive, or tradwife material).

Which brings us to his new single, “Good Times & Tan Lines,” the lead off his forthcoming album, Ain’t In It For My Health, which is out August 29th.

“Good Times & Tan Lines” isn’t my favorite Zach Top song, and I’m not sure it’s supposed to be. It’s essentially a fun summer bop about partying like it’s 1999, that reminds me both of Jackson’s “Chattahoochee” and Top’s own “Sounds Like the Radio.” It is decidedly not breaking new sonic ground, but I am guessing that’s the point: it was the most-added song on country radio last week, and it’s bound to be a country summer hit. I haven’t heard the new album, but I’m guessing this is Top’s way of making sure these kind of traditional songs stay on the radio: throw ‘em a tune they can play in drive time but with a shitload of fiddle and twangy guitar, and then hit ‘em where it hurts later. Plus, I am not anti-party songs. I love me a fun, easy breezy country party song, as long as it doesn’t sound like shit! And in a world where most of them absolutely do sound like shit, I thoroughly look forward to blasting this one while my kids splash around in the sun, asking me to explain exactly what “skinny dipping” means. So have yourself a merry little Zach Top summer: because it’s bound to be a very big Zach Top fall, too. I’m here for it.

- Marissa