Zach Top Announces Debut Album, Tops Radio Adds
If you haven’t heard Zach Top, you’re about to in a big way. The staunch traditionalist that draws comparisons to Mark Chesnutt, Alan Jackson, and Randy Travis is on the honky tonk escalator straight to the top. Not only has he been booked on some of the biggest festival lineups for this upcoming year, he’ll also will be opening for Lainey Wilson for much of 2024.
But that’s not all. Zach Top just released his debut radio single called “Sounds Like The Radio,” and it debuts as the “most added” song on country radio this week. Granted, it’s early in the year and the amount of singles headed to radio is slim. But for such a new artist and for such a traditional country song, this is a significant accomplishment. It truly is a new day when this much twang is being given a chance on mainstream country radio.
“Sounds Like The Radio” is the first taste from what is being called Zach Top’s official debut album, Cold Beer & Country Music, due out on April 5th. Produced by Carson Chamberlin, all the songs are co-written by Top, with all the songs also being co-written by Chamberlin. The album is being released by the new independent label Leo33 out of Nashville, which was founded last April. Zach Top is the label’s flagship artist.
Zach released an 8-song album in May of 2022, but it was really the succession of subsequent singles that have caught fire, and have him poised to break out big time in 2024. “Creating ‘Cold Beer & Country Music’ has been an incredible journey,” says Zach. “This album is a labor of love, a reflection of my roots, and a celebration of the timeless spirit of country music.”
Raised on a ranch in Sunnyside, Washington, Zach Top is one you don’t have to worry about straying from the script. Country music is deep in his soul, and at 25-years-old, he’ll be expressing it for many years to come. What’s taken some time to develop is his writing. The lyrics of “Sounds Like The Radio” are nothing special, but it certainly doesn’t sound like anything we’re used to the radio playing in the last 30 years.
It’s a new day in country music, and it’s due to exciting new traditional artists like Zach Top.
Cold Beer & Country Music TRACK LIST:
- “Sounds Like The Radio” (Zach Top, Carson Chamberlain, Wyatt McCubbin)
- “Cold Beer & Country Music” (Zach Top, Carson Chamberlain)
- “Cowboys Like Me Do” (Zach Top, Carson Chamberlain, Roger Springer)
- “There’s The Sun” (Zach Top, Carson Chamberlain, Wyatt McCubbin)
- “Dirt Turns To Gold” (Zach Top, Carson Chamberlain, Paul Overstreet)
- “The Kinda Woman I Like” (Zach Top, Carson Chamberlain, Michael White)
- “Lonely For Long” (Zach Top, Carson Chamberlain, Mark Nesler)
- “Bad Luck” (ZachTop, Carson Chamberlain, Mark Nesler)
- “Use Me” (Zach Top, Carson Chamberlain, Tim Nichols)
- “Ain’t That A Heartbreak” (Zach Top, Carson Chamberlain, Paul Overstreet)
- “I Never Lie” (Zach Top, Carson Chamberlain, Tim Nichols)
- “Things To Do” (Zach Top, Carson Chamberlain, Mark Nesler)
January 9, 2024 @ 8:33 am
We saw him open for The Steel Woods a few months ago in Shreveport, LA. He puts on a great show and we’d go see him again for sure!
January 9, 2024 @ 8:39 am
Love him! Hope this does well!
January 9, 2024 @ 8:39 am
Very cool to see Paul Overstreet in the mix.
January 9, 2024 @ 10:18 am
Conrad,
I was about to post the same thing. Glad to see him popping up. Man, he wrote some great ones.
January 9, 2024 @ 3:24 pm
He’s still alive and only 68!
I meet Overstreet in 1991 when I was only 13 at a celebrity softball game in Nashville that pitted the two radio stations against each other (WSM FM vs WSIX-FM). After the game they pulled a flatbed into the outfield and mostly everyone performed – Garth, Vince Gill, Clint Black, Patty Loveless, Trisha Yearwood, Kentucky Headhunters…. Afterwards the artists were just wandering the infield. That’s when I got a picture with Oversteet and he signed my program. He was the only one.
I dugout the program after I saw your comment. Conway Twitty, George Jones, and Reba were there, but I don’t remember them performing after the game (I do have a picture of Reba singing the National Anthem) . A lot of actors and pro sports guys too – Phil Niekro, Jerry “The King” Lawler, Faith Ford of Murphy Brown, and interestingly Lisa Hartman of Knots Landing (before she married Clint).
I’ve been listening to Overstreet since you pointed out his writing credit earlier today.
January 9, 2024 @ 4:48 pm
Agreed.
And Mark Nesler. And Tim Nichols.
January 9, 2024 @ 9:17 am
I am pumped to see him with Flatland calvary.
January 9, 2024 @ 9:22 am
That accent! How does a guy from Washington state sound like Ricky Skaggs?
January 10, 2024 @ 12:03 pm
He’s doing a little bit of an accent but more importantly he’s doing a lot of ‘vocal twang’, a tone technique,. which is not the same thing as an accent. You can actually look at a spectrograph of someone’s voice and see that when they sing with a lot of twang’, they’re manipulating the resonating chambers in their vocal tract to create more of certain overtones than a singer who’s singing in another way.
January 9, 2024 @ 9:23 am
Coming to the Midwest for 8 shows with Flatland Cavalry starting Jan 25th, including one here at my home bar, Joe’s Live in Rosemont, IL. Plenty of tickets left. This is gonna be a great show!!!
January 19, 2024 @ 12:05 pm
Wow, I bought my Flatland tix awhile back for Minneapolis not even realizing Zach was opening. Now I’m double pumped.
January 9, 2024 @ 11:36 am
For the past month when I’ve seen “Zach Top” in print, I read it as “Zach Bryan tops …. year end lists, artist performing at “X” festival, adds on (whatever charts)” There’s really a Zach Top?
Zach TOP and Colby Acuff … is the Northwest the next country hotspot for emerging artists?
I must confess, I was never a 90’s country guy. It’s nostalgic AF, but I never yearned to go back to that time in country music. It was a very manufactured sound and a lot of the songwriting was too cute for its own good. “Sounds Like the Radio” and “Justa Jonnesin'” follows that predictable formula (a little).
With that said, I’ll add this guy to all the listening lists and start following his career. Some of our SCM community artists are a little heavy and moody; TOP would lighten the mood.
January 9, 2024 @ 3:00 pm
Early 90s country music was the peak of country radio.
It was fresh, diverse, clever yet purely country.
January 11, 2024 @ 9:52 am
Until Billy Ray Cyrus came to town.
January 9, 2024 @ 3:53 pm
I have been getting hounded by folks for not talking more about Zach Top for a while. I think he’s a promising young artist, but I agree that the songwriting so far has felt pretty pedestrian. He’s got a great sound though, so I hope he finds some more depth in this album.
January 10, 2024 @ 12:08 pm
Hey speaking of ’90s sounding people, and fun songwriting – have you ever covered Hannah Dasher? She’s a total trip and she has some great stuff on her last The Other Damn Half EP.
January 11, 2024 @ 2:11 pm
There’s another great band I saw last year from Oregon called the Shining Dimes. See if you can dig them up, you might like them.
January 9, 2024 @ 1:05 pm
Has some Keith Whitley sound to it also, which it would as Carson Chamberlain was in Keiths band.
January 9, 2024 @ 1:43 pm
This will be great!!
January 9, 2024 @ 3:00 pm
Zach Top is the real deal country.
Not like the rock, folk, or Americana singers covered here.
January 9, 2024 @ 4:58 pm
Can’t be the “Real deal” if drums are being played. Everyone will agree that drums in a “country” song means its rock, folk or Americana.
January 10, 2024 @ 5:12 am
Are you sure that drums on a song make it folk? And do no country songs have drums? As for Americana, Gram Parsons’ Grievous Angel was released 50 years ago this month.
January 10, 2024 @ 10:47 am
Up until a certain point country music didn’t have drums. And when they started being used people would complain that it wasn’t “Real” country music. Sound familiar?
Plenty of Folk music has drums. I would bet drums are found in Folk music in the majority of music that comes from around the world.
January 10, 2024 @ 7:09 pm
So I guess Kaw Liga by Hank Sr isn’t a real country song then
January 9, 2024 @ 10:22 pm
Like the liberal Jason Isbell that people here have a hard on for.
January 9, 2024 @ 10:28 pm
The same bullshit comment you breeze through here to leave half a dozen times a week, CountryKnight. If Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette, Willie Nelson, Joe Bonsall and the Oak Ridge Boys, John Michael Montgomery, and Casper McWade aren’t “real deal country,” I’ll eat my hat. And they all appear on the home page in the most recent articles.
As I’ve said before, as opposed to breezing through here leaving snide comments, how about contributing something of value?
January 10, 2024 @ 5:20 am
Could a dude suggest a retro review of Gram Parsons’ Grievous Angel? Also a piece about the best backup/harmony singers in country/pop/Americana/et al would be interesting. Joanna Cotton and Dominic Frost for starters? Thank you.
January 10, 2024 @ 8:04 am
I’ll see what I can do.
January 12, 2024 @ 9:24 am
Here is a review.
Parsons was a druggie hack.
January 12, 2024 @ 2:53 pm
Noli esse culus.
January 12, 2024 @ 9:26 am
The hit dog barks the loudest. I always elicit a response. At that level, you know I am correct.
SCM is the best country music site around but you named a rock song “Song of the Year.”
My point stands.
January 9, 2024 @ 5:07 pm
Fun to hear ’94 referenced in this song. My high school graduation year, when I was listening to great songs on B93 out of Grand Rapids, MI.
January 9, 2024 @ 6:43 pm
Is Zach Top the “new” Dwight Yoakam…. ??
January 10, 2024 @ 8:11 am
…no.
January 9, 2024 @ 8:32 pm
I’ve been getting into his music this week and I’m really enjoying it. He can pick and sing as you can clearly see in his “Justa Jonesin'” (Acoustic Video). https://youtu.be/hLOk0XQHyDE?si=2ijfhSrCxdmLzbjF.
January 10, 2024 @ 11:01 am
I loved it but that’s nothing compared to his Bluegrass picking I saw a few years back! He is holding back here! I just listened to a few songs, I really like it. Sounds like a lot of 90s greats rolled into one – Ricky Skaggs, Clint Black, and a few others. My favorite song so far is Bad Luck.
January 19, 2024 @ 12:10 pm
Clint Black was jumping out for me.
January 9, 2024 @ 8:33 pm
Zach Top, Carson Chamberlain and Wyatt McCubbin have been putting out SOLID country music for a few years now. If you like Zach Top, I highly suggest you check out Wyatt McCubbin as well. He has co-written for Josh Ward, Cody Johnson and many others over the past few years and his solo stuff is pretty good as well.
Dan Alley is another to check out. Don’t sleep on Jake Bush either.
All that said, very excited about Zach Top’s potential. His bluegrass background has his roots deeply in the right soil. Aside from his vocal and writing abilities, he is a hell of a picker in his own right. Sky is the limit for this kid.
January 9, 2024 @ 11:27 pm
A song about listening to country music/ radio/ jukboxes needs something extra in order not to sound banal or cliched: Three good ones: “Red Necks, White Socks and Blue Ribbon Beer” (Johnny Russell) “I Just Started Hating Cheatin’ Songs,” (Moe Bandy) and “If It Weren’t for Country Music I’d Go Crazy” (Clinton Gregory). Sorry, “Sounds Like the Radio” by Zach Top doesn’t have it. And his voice doesn’t grab me like Chesnutt, Travis or Jackson, either.
January 10, 2024 @ 5:40 am
To me, the nineties were the best era for country music. Sure, this song’s lyrics aren’t profound, but everything doesn’t need to be. Sometimes music should just be fun, instead of contemplative.
January 10, 2024 @ 5:55 am
good clean country fun the 90’s way!! Sounds good.
January 10, 2024 @ 6:46 am
…mr, top made me listening to some good ol’ ken mellons again. in his best interest – he should avoid doing that.
January 10, 2024 @ 6:46 am
I love this! Another great discovery thanks to this website. As for the music sounding like the 90’s, I don’t get it, to me it sounds timeless, not ‘retro’ or dated at all.
January 10, 2024 @ 7:29 am
I like Zach Top. Nothing really original here, but good boot tapping sing along type country music. Thanks.
January 10, 2024 @ 9:19 am
Yup.
I don’t need my country music to be emo dreck.
January 10, 2024 @ 11:50 am
I first saw him at the Bluebird in Nashville on an early show on a Tuesday night last February. I went to see Josh Grider and left blown away by Zach. Was asking him then about any dates he had planned and he was talking about seedy dive bars in Lexington he was trying to get booked at and now he’s out with Lainey all year. He played some good ones that night that aren’t on this album. Got to see him open for Steel Woods over the summer as well and he was great. Unlimited potential. Sounds like Keith Whitley when he was with JD Crowe is the best comparison I have.
January 10, 2024 @ 1:03 pm
I know music does not revolve around radio as it did in the past, but this is a very positive sign for Traditional Country Music fans!!!
January 10, 2024 @ 4:49 pm
I have a little bit from him and like what I hear. Anxious to hear more!
January 10, 2024 @ 6:30 pm
Sounds good to me. Can’t wait to hear more solid country music from him. And he’s authentic, from a ranching/rural lifestyle.