FEB 27, 2025 | OPINION | By Lilly Asano (Co-Editor-In-Chief)
It’s summer in North Carolina. The air is warm and wind rips my hair around, filling my car with the familiar scent of sweet grass. My sister and I turn the volume up, singing one of our favorite songs, “East Side of Sorrow” by Zach Bryan. All is right in the world, I’m home.
“He said the sun’s gonna rise tomorrow / Somewhere on the east side of sorrow / You better pack your bags west / Stick out your chest / And then hit the road,” we sing together.
I consider myself an original Zach Bryan fan.
I’m not trying to seem different from other girls. I don’t hold myself above other Zach Bryan fans — I wasn’t ranked in his top listeners in last year’s Spotify Wrapped and wouldn’t consider myself his biggest fan, but I listened to Bryan before he made it big.
My sister and I were raised strictly on country music. I was convinced my suburban childhood would lead me to my “Suds in the Bucket” moment, complete with a white truck and Prince Charming. I only listened to pop music in my friends’ cars and was jealous of the musical variety their parents seemingly gave them.
I typically followed the rules, but I rebelled against my parents by listening to anything but country music in middle school and high school. I rarely played country in my car and tried to exclusively listen to folk and house music, genres that made me unique in North Carolina but completely average in Colorado.
I’m sure the first few times my sister played Zach Bryan in my car in 2021, I threw a fit. I skipped the song and told her to play one of my playlists: mad she’d brought country music into my car, ironically a Ford F-150. But eventually, I came around to Zach Bryan. He was more folksy than the music I’d grown up with and reminded me of Western country music, not Southern pop-esque country music.
In 2022, my now ex-boyfriend took me to a Zach Bryan concert in Asheville, N.C. While the venue’s official capacity is 7,200, half of the seats were roped off, and only a couple hundred people had floor tickets.
His set was minimal. A drawing of a bucking bronco and “Zach Bryan” was displayed throughout the concert, and lights simply dimmed — there was nothing theatrical about his performance. It was just Zach Bryan and a few thousand concert attendees singing his songs back to him. Bryan had released “Burn, Burn, Burn” five days before and stumbled through the song. We knew the lyrics better than he did.
Last August, my dad, sister and I went to “The Quittin’ Time Tour” in Greensboro, N.C. 21,000 people packed the Greensboro Coliseum, breaking the stadium’s previous attendance record. Bryan’s new set included lights, fog and a stage presence I’d never seen before. His band was much more experienced than the one I’d seen two years earlier, and I was hooked.
When Bryan was arrested in September 2023 for failing to comply in a traffic stop, I barely batted an eye. His security crew was pulled over in Okla., and Bryan got out of his car, separate from the security car. According to ABC News, he asked what had been taking so long and refused to return to his car when prompted by the police.
His arrest circulated fan concerns about his character, especially concerning his ex-wife, Rose Madden. One TikTok user even claimed that Bryan cheated on Madden while she was deployed in a viral video.
Bryan’s past was reopened in October when he posted an Instagram story stating his breakup from influencer Brianna “Chickenfry” LaPaglia on Oct. 22, 2024.
“I respect and love her with every ounce of my heart. She has loved me unconditionally for a very long time and for that I’ll always thank her,” he wrote in the now archived Instagram story. “I have had an incredibly hard year personally and struggled through some pretty severe things. I thought it would be beneficial for both of us to go our different ways. I am not perfect and never will be. Please respect Brianna’s privacy and space in this and if you have it in your heart, mine too.”
LaPaglia claimed to be shocked. Bryan and LaPaglia had not communicated announcing their breakup, and after turning down a 12 million dollar NDA agreement, she took to her social media. LaPaglia cited emotional abuse and said that “you can’t pay people off that you hurt.”
As a fan and woman, I was horrified. I stopped listening to his music. Bryan remained quiet on social media.
A month later, however, LaPaglia went through a public split from her childhood best friend, Grace O’Malley. TikTokers pulled incriminating clips and criticized LaPaglia for being a mean girl.
One video of the two friends resurfaced in December, where LaPaglia essentially blames O’Malley for being assaulted when they were 16, traveling to Atlantic City, N.J. together.
“Maybe you shouldn’t hang out around older men because that’s really scary and wrong,” LaPaglia said into the microphone while recording a podcast episode, attempting to address young listeners. “And they will always take advantage of you because that’s just what life is… be a good 16-year-old, not do what we did.”
In the extended clip, O’Malley becomes visibly uncomfortable and tells her friend, “It wasn’t my fault.” But LaPaglia continued, digging into a story that wasn’t entirely hers to share. I hated her for her disrespect of O’Malley and ignorance towards assault victims. I found myself siding with O’Malley: it’s never the victim’s fault.
My perspective of LaPaglia shifted, and I began to accept the reality. I wasn’t going to stop listening to Zach Bryan’s music. He’s not great, but neither is LaPaglia.
I struggled with this. Could I move past his actions? Can I truly call myself a feminist? I looked at my friendships and evaluated how I judged others.
Our society praises people like Bryan and LaPaglia. We disregard the wrongs of celebrities and influential people, rotating influencers and people to cancel. We elect men like Donald Trump into office, ignoring alleged sexual assault and criminal convictions. I’ve never known Bryan to be a good person. I decided to separate Bryan from his music.
Bryan’s music addresses his own moral convictions and what it means to be human. I tend to be unforgiving in my own mistakes and shortcomings. I judged myself heavily and wanted to hate his music.
But Zach Bryan reminds me of home, high school and growing up. I think of my sister and dad, of long drives in North Carolina summers. So, I still consider myself a Zach Bryan fan and will happily play his music for anyone who wants to listen.