Zach Bryan vs. Dave Portnoy Results in Hilarious Diss Track

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Generally speaking, Saving Country Music doesn’t get involved in affairs of the heart. That is why after Zach Bryan and Barstool Sports podcast personality Brianna Chickenfry broke up recently (yes, that’s her real fake name, btw), the editorial decision was made to leave it as fodder for the tabloids and keep the focus on the music.

But this is absolutely hilarious, and deserves a bump in attention, especially since it involves music itself. Even if you’re a Zach Bryan superfan, or just a casual supporter, or even just a tacit apologist, you can’t help but be entertained by this.

The owner and founder of Barstool Sports, El Presidente Dave Portnoy, has been perpetrating an open beef with Zach Bryan over a host of issues recently, which boiled over when Zach Bryan broke up with Brianna Chickenfry on October 21st.

Apparently when Zach Bryan played a Super Bowl pregame performance in February, Portnoy was going to take it in with Brianna Chickenfry and fellow Barstool Sports personality Josh Richards, only to find out that Zach Bryan had “banned” Portnoy from attending the performance. After Portnoy made a passing joke about how many boyfriends Brianna had leading up to her relationship with Bryan, Zach decided to make Portnoy persona no grata in his universe.

In the aftermath of the breakup with Brianna, Portnoy then revealed that he felt Zach’s sincerity was fake when they first met, and that Zach got mad at Brianna when she made a comment at the Golden Globes about looking forward to meeting a guy. Portnoy took it as Zach Bryan being weak and insecure.

Fast forward to Tuesday night (11-5) when most of American was focused on the Presidential election, and El Presidente dropped the mother of all diss tracks and videos with Barstool’s Josh Richards called “Smallest Man.” Though the hip-hop style of the song won’t find a lot of appeal among country fans, the lyrics are pretty damn hilarious.

Portnoy and Richards mix Zach Bryan song titles with cutting take downs, while the backdrop for the song and video is Zach Bryan’s notorious arrest in Oklahoma where he got mouthy with police officers, and was put in jail briefly. The Barstool bros also seem to harp on STDs. Who knows if that’s a bit of hyperbole, since this also inadvertently implicates Brianna. But she has loosely endorsed the track.

Little evil face, tried to split up Bri and Grace,
Your style’s Morgan Wallen/Tyler Childers copy paste
You think that you’re hard, close but no cigar
Whose idea was it to give this oompa loompa a guitar?


But there is another interesting wrinkle to this story. As of Wednesday morning (11-6), the video for the song has been stricken from YouTube in what appears to be a copyright claim from Zach’s label WMG. Zach Bryan’s team might be trying to get the video, and perhaps the song itself, taken down, though Warner is notorious for being aggressive with YouTube copyright claims, and the takedown could be just bot generated.

UPDATE: Eventually, the song was taken down too, though it appears a shorter version as been re-uploaded.

If there is an active effort by the Zach Bryan camp to suppress the song/video, this is the wrong approach and only plays into the characterization by Dave Portnoy that Zach Bryan is weak and lacks confidence. Though it’s never easy to get dissed, if Zach Bryan wants to make the best of the situation, he should laugh along. Getting under people’s skin is exactly what the notorious troll-like Dave Portnoy is known for.

Zach Bryan is a great writer—way better than Josh Richards and Dave Portnoy. Instead of crying foul, he should return fire, or figure out how to be the bigger man. Trying to get the video taken down will only result in the Streisand Effect.

The best music often comes from breakups, and Zach Bryan has already been releasing some teasers from songs clearly inspired by the dissolving of the Brianna Chieckenfry relationship. It’s a shame things didn’t work out between these two. But as someone who is a genius at putting his emotions to songs, and as someone who shares her perspective as a woman in a man’s world, both Zach Bryan and Brianna Chickenfry will hopefully come out of the other side stronger.

Meanwhile, country music needs more of this diss stuff. As the hip-hop world figured out long ago, it’s good for business.

© 2024 Saving Country Music

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