Lately, country music up-and-comer Bailey Zimmerman has been soaking it all in. In late 2020, the Illinois native began uploading original music to social media in between truck lifting jobs. One song in particular, “Never Comin’ Home,” took off, prompting Zimmerman to resign from his job and borrow $1,500 from his mother for help moving to Nashville. He set the bar high with his 2023 studio debut Religiously, which yielded a trio of chart-topping hits in “Fall in Love,” “Rock and a Hard Place” and the title track. This, coupled with the success of his headlining Religiously. The Tour, significantly upped the stakes for his sophomore album. In a recent interview with Billboard, Zimmerman opened up about starting completely from scratch.
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Bailey Zimmerman Has New Music Coming Soon
Tonight at midnight (Friday, Aug. 8), Bailey Zimmerman’s second studio album, Different Night, Same Rodeo, officially hits the airwaves. And it turns out, the project fans are getting is quite different from its first draft.
Feeling pressured to put out new music following a sold-out headlining tour, Zimmerman began writing. However, he tells Billboard, something simply didn’t feel quite right.
“I was like, ‘I’m not really feeling this album. The songs are good, but it doesn’t feel personal to me,’” he recalled. “If I put it out, it’s out there and I can’t take it back.”
So he made a bold decision. “That’s when I pulled the whole plug on it,” said the CMA-nominated artist, 25.
Zimmerman’s redirection resulted in him contributing lyrics to seven of the 18 songs on Different Night, Same Rodeo. One of those songs is “Chevy Silverado,” a love letter to his first vehicle.
“This is my story, from meeting girls to hanging out and getting my heart broken,” he continues. “Now, I still have the Chevy Silverado — but none of those girls, none of those loves. The surface meaning is that your Chevy will never leave you, but the girls will.”
[RELATED: This Luke Combs-Bailey Zimmerman Collab Started With a Single Text]
Will He Change Genres?
Following an “absolutely awful” drunken performance at Luke Bryan’s Crash My Playa festival in January, Bailey Zimmerman has made some changes. In June, he revealed in a social media post that he had cut back on his alcohol use.
“God saved me from drinking and smoking all the time… [My faith] has just grown stronger over the past few years,” he told Billboard.
So much so that some fans are asking him to change genres.
“I’ve had people ask me if I would do a Christian album, but God’s calling me to do what I’m doing right now and there’s a reason for it,” Zimmerman said. “100%, I’d do a Christian collab. I’ve thought about doing a Christian album — but my version of it, where it’s Christian-country. I’ve actually been talking to [Contemporary Christian music singer-songwriter] Brandon Lake about doing that, and I’m such a big fan of his.”
Featured image by Jason Kempin/Getty Images
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