On the heels of his fifth studio album The Great American Bar Scene arriving this summer, Zach Bryan is keeping up his prolific pace with the release of a new single called "This World's a Giant" via Belting Bronco / Warner Records.
The song features harmonies from Heaven Schmidtt of New York indie band Grumpy. "Zach has shown us, over and over, how he lifts up small artists he believes in. He is a true artist who takes chances in the name of a great song," Schmidtt said of the collaboration. "We became acquainted through a mutual musician friend, Jack Van Cleaf, where I got a chance to show off my vocal chops. We've been working together regularly since. He's become a true friend in music and I'm grateful to work alongside this special artist."
"This World's a Giant" is a spacious, horn-inflected number about the overwhelm of it all that probably reflects Bryan's frequent citing of Bon Iver as a source of inspiration more than anything else I've heard from his catalogue. It's really nice! Hear it below.
This is a two-fold story, though, because the singer-songwriter has recently been in the news for more than his well-loved music. You see, Bryan recently announced on Instagram that he and his girlfriend, Brianna LaPaglia — better known as Barstool Sports podcaster Brianna Chickenfry — had broken up. She alleged that she was blindsided by the since-deleted post, claiming to have not known Bryan was going to make the news public so soon (the day after they ended things, apparently), and was rightfully upset about it.
In what is kind of a sweet gesture but ultimately probably a huge HR violation, Barstool founder Dave Portnoy and Josh Richards, who both co-host the BFFs podcast with LaPaglia, decided to record and release a five-minute diss track about Bryan yesterday (November 6) — and Portnoy has since claimed that the artist's label issued a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) complaint, removing the diss from streaming services over its outro's melodic similarities to The Great American Bar Scene track "28."
After adjusting the audio and announcing a re-release of "Smallest Man" (very Taylor Swift of them), Portnoy noted that it was still muted on various platforms — but he now had determined that Richards had failed to inform him that he had signed a music deal with Warner a few years ago and they "own his ass."
"You think that's just it? You think alright, we're just gonna put 'Smallest Man' away? I will write 10,000 diss tracks," Portnoy promised in the latest update to the saga on TikTok. "I will go die in the booth. I will put the headsets on. I will come back spittin' bars twice as hot."
As per Barstool's own reporting (if we may indeed call it that), the diss takes shots at Bryan's height and hairline, his alleged drinking problem and drunk tweeting (there was a whole thing recently about him drunkenly picking Kanye over Swift in a series of posts on the platform), as well as his arrest last year and alleged spreading of STIs. It might get even worse, but the audio still being muted bars confirming or denying that.
Personally, I just think it's funny that they called it "Smallest Man" — again, Portnoy claimed in the song that the musician is only five-foot-five — and then he went and released "This World's a Giant," which Bryan first teased acoustically on Instagram back in July. If LaPaglia's side of the breakup story is to be believed, that's certainly rough, although these Barstool dudes are hardly any kind of moral authority on anything.