The future of country music has an old-school sound. Newcomer Zach Top is leading a neo-traditional revival thanks to his debut album, 2024’s Cold Beer & Country Music, which brims with his distinct twang and songs inspired by country music that was popular three and four decades ago.
Growing up in Sunnyside, Wash., Top soaked in the songs of artists like Keith Whitley and George Strait and immersed himself in bluegrass and old-time country during his guitar lessons. Top and his siblings launched a family bluegrass band, and he later began playing with a Seattle-based bluegrass group — but his heart was always in country music. Producer, writer and tour manager Carson Chamberlain, known for his work with Whitley and Alan Jackson, reached out after he saw one of the videos Top had posted of himself on Facebook. By the time he moved to Nashville in 2021, Top had begun co-writing with Chamberlain and other songwriting luminaries, “guys that wrote the hits that I grew up on and that made me love country music,” he says.
“One of my favorite parts of the process of making music is getting to create it yourself,” the 27-year-old Top explains. “It makes a little more of an intimate connection with the song when it’s coming from something you lived and you make something universal out of it.”
This digital cover story is part of Billboard’s Genre Now package, highlighting the artists pushing their musical genres forward — and even creating their own new ones.
Related
Those writing and recording sessions became Cold Beer & Country Music, which includes Top’s breakthrough songs such as “Bad Luck” and the ’90s country throwback “Sounds Like the Radio,” which reached the top 20 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart. The album also featured “I Never Lie,” which became his Billboard Hot 100 debut and also reached the Hot Country Songs top 10. Top scored a Country Music Association Awards nomination for new artist of the year, spent much of 2024 on the road opening for Lainey Wilson and will be direct support for Jackson’s Last Call: One More for the Road Tour in 2025, along with headlining his own tour. But even as Top looks to the future, he says what makes great country music remains timeless.
“Three chords and the truth are necessary. A fiddle and steel guitar never hurt. But it’s songs that make people feel something and something that’s got a story to it. That’s what I love about country music — songs that make me feel understood, no matter what stage of life I’m in.”
This story appears in the Jan. 11, 2025, issue of Billboard.