Song of the Week delves into the fresh songs we just can’t get out of our heads. Find these tracks and more on our Spotify Top Songs playlist, and for our favorite new songs from emerging artists, check out our Spotify New Sounds playlist. This week, Zach Bryan and Kacey Musgraves embrace the dog days of summer.
It’s late August, and it’s hot out there. It’s the time of year Fitzgerald wrote about in The Great Gatsby, and the kind of heat Tennessee Williams steeped his characters in throughout A Streetcar Named Desire. It’s overwhelmingly warm, particularly here in the South, in a way where it’s too late to romanticize it; it just feels oppressive. It feels like melancholy.
For as hellish as it is at the moment, the timing couldn’t have been better for Zach Bryan and Kacey Musgraves to release their new duet, “I Remember Everything.” There are a few different collaborations on Bryan’s new self-titled LP, including team-ups with The Lumineers, Sierra Ferrell, and The War and Treaty, but working with Musgraves feels like a no-brainer for the artist who built his reputation on strong songwriting that feels homespun without veering too far into hokey.
“I Remember Everything” is set on the water as a beachy summer romance comes to a close. “The sand from your hair is blowin’ in my eyes/ Blame it on the beach, grown men don’t cry,” Bryan sings. When it’s Musgraves’ turn to chime in, she does so with a line that is so utterly and quintessentially her: “You’re drinkin’ everything to ease your mind/ But when the hell are you gonna ease mine?” It’s the sort of quietly clever lyric she conditioned us all to expect with her most beloved project, Golden Hour, and if there’s one thing Musgraves is almost always game for, it’s a song about yearning.
There’s a wistfulness to “I Remember Everything,” laid over simple guitars with the barest touch of strings towards the end. These two might as well be playing together on the front porch, especially considering the fact that they’re the sole writers on the song. “I Remember Everything” is for those of us who sometimes have trouble untangling threads of nostalgia from reality: “I wish I didn’t, but I do remember every moment on the nights with you,” they sing together on the chorus, coming together one last time.
In a time when so much (mainstream) country music feels boring, forced, or, worst of all, written exclusively for the ease and safety of a radio hit, Bryan and Musgraves have consistently been breaths of fresh air. Together, that energy is a gale.
— Mary Siroky
Associate Editor