An Album to "Fall in Love" With

    I have spent most of my life as a country music hater.

    It’s never been my jam. Sure, I could hypothesize about why—my general taste for more energetic music, my desire to distance myself from the redneck chaos I have witnessed, or whatever else it might be. However, two summers ago, I began compiling a playlist of country songs I actually did enjoy, mostly contemporary country. Somewhere along the way, in a pivotal moment unbeknownst to me at the time, my younger brother introduced me to a few tracks from Bailey Zimmerman’s debut album, Religiously. The Album. Instantly enamored with his sound, I decided to listen to the entire album and see how the rest of it held up. Little did I know how much I would come to adore this album and that my music taste would expand to embrace the country genre because of it.

    That might seem a little strange, given how overwhelmingly sad the album is. Most of the songs focus on the ending or breakdown of relationships, studying that pain from different angles. The songs can be grouped into a few categories: six of them, including “Religiously” and “Forget About You,” reflect on those relationships in hindsight, even as the singer’s pain is still present. Several others, like “Warzone” and “Rock and a Hard Place,” have a greater sense of immediacy to their expressed pain, as if the breakdown is ongoing. Three of the songs act as warnings against pursuing things that will ultimately bring pain. These different facets of difficult emotions are displayed through a range of imagery: taking refuge in a church, fighting in a war, driving off without looking back, and salvaging a crumbling house, to name a few.

    Like the variety of vivid images present in the music, the heightened emotions of the album don’t follow an orderly progression of increasing or decreasing pain; this album doesn’t represent the neatly packaged five stages of grief we’ve heard about our whole lives. The hurt expressed in each song fluctuates, giving the album a more realistic outlook on the emotional roller coaster of coping with pain. The album begins with a gut-wrenching lament, so we might expect the songs to become progressively less sad as they go on; however, the track order consists of dips and spikes of pain, as if the wound is repeatedly healing only to be torn open afresh. Some of the songs are more removed from the pain, while others are in the trenches of it. The pattern of overwhelming tragedy, regardless of its degree, is broken by only two songs: “Found Your Love,” a respite halfway through the tracklist that focuses on the positive changes stemming from a connection (potentially the singer’s growing relationship with God as opposed to another human), and a cover of “God’s Gonna Cut You Down,” an established country classic about the eventual consequences of wrong behavior, near the end. As a whole unit, the album dives into the nuances of what youthful heartbreak feels like through vivid storytelling and gritty vocals, and each individual song demonstrates Zimmerman’s writing craft and talent for performance.

    While each song on the album draws out my emotions in its own way, there are a few in particular that stand out as the best tracks from the entire collection. The title track, “Religiously,” sets the tone for the album by evoking far-too-relatable images of watching a former love move on and live the future you expected to have together. It’s a song perfect for crying on the floor (if you ever need to do that sort of thing). Zimmerman sings about masking the ongoing pain from other people: “Act like I’m happier now / But all of my friends know that ain’t the truth.” Amen to that! He wishes he could do things differently and fix his past mistakes, and the chorus repeats the powerful image of sitting “in the back of the church / Praying just to stop the hurt.” How many of us have begged God for a break from our suffering in moments of immense pain?

    One of my personal favorite tracks off the album, “Forget About You,” takes the familiar adage “forgive and forget” and twists it (because it’s never that simple). Let’s face it—it’s hard to forget about someone when everything reminds you of them. This song reflects on the youthful naivete of being “nineteen, chasing that lightnin’” years later. Even though Zimmerman feels no bitterness about the situation anymore, he cannot erase the impact that this girl had on his life. The memories continue to persist into the present, making it hard to completely move on. Moreover, the vocals on this track give me the soaring sensation of speeding past the pine trees he mentions in the chorus, and that’s an unmatched level of music magic.

    From Zimmerman’s own commentary, “Fall in Love” grapples with being cheated on. The first verse has a bitter humor to it in the lines “I’m glad to see the stop sign didn’t hit ya / Bring you back to your senses,” but that bitterness quickly subsides into deeper pain. Most of us, myself included, might try to cover up our pain by joking about it, but that only works for so long, and even within the song, that humor breaks multiple times to reveal the truth. The song begins and ends with the mention of a shared dream, but the chorus counters this with “love’s a smoke ring / Wrapped around your finger / One second it’s a blessing / And the next it’s already gone.” The dream and the love didn’t last, but the heartbreak still does. This song is vulnerable and honest and warns listeners to think twice before falling for someone, but it truthfully blends salty sarcasm with that pain.

    Another of my favorites, “Rock and a Hard Place,” is, for one thing, perfect for belting out (it’s extremely cathartic to sing along to the gravelly vocals for some reason; I’ve done so many times in my car on a rough day). Conflict seeps through in every word and clever slant rhyme of the song: “We’ve been talkin’ ‘bout forever since we’ve been together / Something ‘bout a ring makes you think we’re better off,” but “throwing in the towel takes some effort” (a powerful truth). Indecision paralyzes both parties involved, and the tension is so real in just waiting for something—anything—to happen. It feels all too familiar just to want to know what comes next, even if it hurts. The waiting, the pressure between a rock and a hard place, is often more painful than the actual ending of a relationship.

    In “Where It Ends,” the last track I’d like to highlight, we find Zimmerman calling out an ex who did him dirty. He “Went to battle” for her and generously gave her second chances, all with the hope of being loved in return, but eventually reality dawned on him. The song’s bridge takes on a bit of a bitter, sarcastic edge with the lines “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me / You showed me what true love shouldn’t be,” which ultimately converts the pain of the relationship’s end into an opportunity for character growth. In that sarcastic moment, he takes an optimistic point of view, which I can relate to at my core; I too blend sarcasm and positivity in what I say and write, and I appreciate the irony injected into that bridge.

    Religiously. The Album. gets the singular credit for opening my stubborn mind to country music. It changed my outlook on the genre and primed my mind to accept and love many other country artists. Maybe this is due in part to the subtle edge of rock woven in, but regardless, when Bailey Zimmerman’s vocals and songwriting combine to tell heart-wrenching stories from his own life, I can’t help but listen in rapture. I’m not usually one to listen to sad music on repeat, but the vocals and well-written lyrics draw me in and fill me with joy instead of drowning me in sorrow. Since discovering his album, I've been lucky enough to see him live twice, and he brings all the energy and all the feels with him to the live stage. I am utterly optimistic in looking forward to his sophomore album's release next month; if it's anything like this one, it'll be on repeat for months to come.