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Golden Rhythm Solutions

Zach Bryan - The Fading of the Red White and Blue: “We Need to Find Our Way Back”

  • Writer: Keane Neal-Riquier
    Keane Neal-Riquier
  • Oct 8
  • 6 min read
“We need to find our way back. I served this country, I love this country, and the song itself is about all of us coming out of this divided space.” [i]

 

On October 3rd, Zach Bryan released a snippet of a new song captioned The Fading of the Red White and Blue on Instagram. Coming from an upcoming release named “Bad News,” it sparked a range of political interest. Of which, its meaning was deduced to a single line, nine words long; “ice is gonna come bust down your door.”

 

This controversy can be captured from a list of headlines of both left and right media outlets:

 

Bias coverage of news stories covering the story.

Though not all outlets covered the song in this manner, these sentiments bring us to an intersection with insight into how we interpret the world around us. With actions from “bashing” and “slamming” to lost minds and “scorched earth,” the heat of this interpretation culminates in the reaction from the Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem.

 

When talking about the song on The Benny Johnson Show, she found herself “disappointed and disheartened,”[ii] after listening. More fully, she expressed that she wanted him to “understand how completely disrespectful that song is, not just to law enforcement but to this country.”

 

To view this song so sharply, in either direction, we may very well be overlooking the artistic core that Zach Bryan is aiming for. This is something he expressed in his response, “I’m on neither side of these radical sides…Left wing or right wing, we’re all one bird and American.”


Bryan is no stranger to the spotlight, he has captured 29 million monthly listeners with multiple songs over 1 billion plays on Spotify. After 8 years in the Navy, his call to music was bright enough to receive an honorable discharge so he could serve his country in a way that only he could.

 

“I served this country; I love this country and the song itself is about all of us coming out of this divided space… This song is about how much I love this country and everyone in it more than anything. When you hear the rest of the song, you will understand the full context that hits both sides of the aisle.”[iii]

 

Bryan’s Grammy win in 2024 for best Duo/Group Performance alongside Kacey Muscgraves comes with 3 additional nominations (Best Country Album, Best Country Song, and Best Country Solo Performance.)[iv] This is a testament to his aptitude to capture the bare essence of the fertile soil and open skies of the American Spirit.

 

This is seen through his lyrics that often aim to represent something ethereal. “There’s orange dancing in your eyes from bulb light…Something in the orange tells me you’re never coming home…If you leave today, I’ll stare at the way the orange touches all things around. The grass, the trees, the dew,” – words from one of his most popular songs Something in the Orange. Or rather, the opening to his latest album The Great American Bar Scene, with the two-minute spoken word poem, Lucky Enough admiring the middle of America.

 

And so, with this, we must consider that a line about ICE may be broader than just a political “slam.” So, what might it point toward? Let’s first open ourselves to the lyrics in full:

 

Didn’t wake up dead or in jail

Some out-of-town boys been giving us hell

I got some bad news

I woke up missing you

 

My friends are all degenerates

But they’re all I’ve got

The generational story

Of dropping the plot

I heard the cops came,

Cocky m---f---, ain’t they

 

And ICE is gonna come bust down your door

Try and build a house no one builds no more

But I got a telephone

Kids are all scared an all alone

 

The bar stopped bumping

The rock stopped rolling

The middle fingers rising

And it won’t stop showing

 

Got some bad news

 

The Fading of the Red White and Blue

 

As the caption of his posts insists, what is paramount and forefront is the fading of the unity of a nation. Each line leading up to the final one seems to be a moment that signals a slow memory-like fading of the spirit that animates Middle America. What Bryan is pointing to in his response to “everyone using this now as a weapon,” iii is something that is not necessarily political, and is in fact, often missing from political discourse.

 

What Bryan seems to be aiming for is reengaging with a very certain patriotic sense that has been forgotten by urban-centric progressives. While, on the other hand, it is a core sentiment in an America under President Trump, but its often in a form that resides with threads of a repelling frustration:

 

“Every day, we are lifting our forgotten Americans off the sidelines, out of the margins…[v] The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer.[vi]” President Donald Trump

 

What Bryan offers is a search toward the “need to find our way back, and “all of us coming out of this divided space.” iii

 

This love for the American spirit is common in the tradition of country music with its moments of cottonwood trees, the smell of fresh cobbler, and dirt roads in songs like Craig Morgan’s “Almost Home.” It’s the meandering life of George Strait's “Troubadour” and Alan Jackson’s “Blues Man.” And it’s how the threads of Chris Stapleton’s Kentuckian memories gave us a moment of unity when he sang the national anthem.

 

While returning to the original line, “and ICE is gonna come bust down your door,” we shouldn’t find a political slam suited for a wrestling ring, nor should we even see it as a strident political push. Rather, perhaps we should see it as the potential loss of a friend or a loss of sanctity and safety felt when the reality of deportations becomes a little closer than just a national narrative – the loss of family and life.

 

The fading of the red, white, and blue, isn’t him protesting the country he fell in love with during his teenage years under Oklahoma skies. He’s turning toward us – the rest of his fellow citizens who stand beneath these colors to try and remember what they once meant, and what they might come to mean. Maybe the real controversy isn’t about ICE at all, but that we can no longer recognize the difference between critique and care. Where every reflection becomes a fracture, and any lament becomes a betrayal. He’s mourning what we’re allowing to slip away.

 

It's a call for a return to conscience and a shared moral imagination in a country that spans both rolling hills and pointed towers. And, in that way, The Fading of the Red, White, and Blue, isn’t about division at all. It’s about memory – the kind that keeps a nation…human.

 

 

Notes:


Chronological Fact Sheet:

  1. Zach Bryan released a 1 minute snippet of an unrealeased song on October 3rd, 2025.

  2. The song, specifically a line about ICE busting down your door caught political attention on both sides of the aisle.

  3. The response gained backlash from Kristi Noem, Secretary of Homeland Security.

  4. Kristi Noem made her remarks on a The Benny Johnson Show.

  5. Zach Bryan provided a response on Instagram - though unfindable in its original form as it was a temporary story. Above quotes of which, are linked to secondary news sources.

  6. Zach Bryan took an apolitical stance that explicitly prioritized national unity.


 
 
 

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