Zach Bryan, one of the most commercially successful artists in music today, is nowhere to be found on the massive ballot that just went out to Grammy voters, after declining to submit his work for consideration in any category.
A search of the online ballot, which is available only to Recording Academy members and not the general public, revealed that Bryan’s name does not appear among the thousands of contestants whose work has been submitted for record of the year, album of the year or song of the year. Nor are his albums or songs entered for any rock, country or Americana categories, the fields where the genre-crossing superstar would most likely compete.
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Sources confirm that Bryan decided not to submit this year, based on feeling that he does not feel comfortable with awards shows making music competitive.
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That would be in keeping with Bryan’s famously mercurial attitude about the music industry in general, even though he is not known to have declined to submit his work for awards consideration in the past.
A boycott by Bryan places him in the select company of just a few other superstars who’ve made the decision to sit out the process, most famously the Weeknd and Drake. But while the Weeknd made his choice after being shut out of nominations entirely in the year that “Blinding Lights” exploded, Bryan made his call to sit it out coming right on the heels of having actually won a Grammy earlier this year.
Bryan won his 2024 Grammy, his first, for “I Remember Everything,” a duet with Kacey Musgraves that scored him a best country duo/group performance award. He has been nominated four times altogether, three of those coming last year and one the year before. All four nods came in the country field, although the singer has said he does not consider himself strictly a country artist.
Fans have complained that his awards wins and nominations have been far from commensurate with his level of popularity. Although Bryan is by far one of the biggest artists to break out in the last five years, he did not receive a best new artist nomination from the Grammys while he was eligible, to the surprise or consternation of many.
His record of success at the CMA Awards has also been limited, with only two nominations to date. In 2023, he was nominated for but did not win best new artist, his only nod that year. For the upcoming 2024 CMAs, he again received one nomination, for musical event of the year, for the duet with Musgraves. Bryan does not promote his songs to country radio, which has been one explanation for his small CMAs yield.
He received a whopping 16 nominations for a non-industry-related show, the People’s Choice Country Awards, ultimately winning one of those when the show was broadcast two weeks ago.
While it seems possible Bryan could hold a resentment against the Grammys for not nominating him in bigger and better categories in the past, a boycott of the process certainly fits in with the star choosing to withdraw further from what he sees as the music industry machinery — as he already does by asking his label, Warner, not to promote his songs at any format.
Bryan continues to prove himself a superstar by other measures of success. The most recent Billboard Boxscore chart showed the singer ruling the monthly concert gross rankings with a staggering $93.2 million gross just for the month of August, representing the receipts from 467,000 tickets sold for 13 shows, 10 of which were in stadiums. A two-night stand in Philadelphia alone managed to earn $20.7 million.
On the current Billboard 200, he has three albums in the top 20, including his most recent release, “The Great American Bar Scene,” which sits at No. 11. The self-titled “Zach Bryan” is at No. 17 and “American Heartbreak,” an album that came out more than two years ago, continues to stay strong on the chart at No. 18.
Bryan had a burst of controversy in September when he made a jocular comment on X about preferring Kanye West to Taylor Swift. After enormous blowback from Swifties, he subsequently apologized for the remark, which he said was made in a drunken state, and deactivated his account on the app, saying his activity there was doing him more harm than good. He continues to post on Instagram, where he issued his profuse mea culpas for the Ye/Swift tweet.
With additional reporting by Steven J. Horowitz.
