A different kind of romance

Lately, I’ve been listening to more country music than I’d like to admit to.

This is left field for me as there are so many elements of the genre that I can’t stand. The glass slide guitar sound, trope drowned choruses, and of course the unforgivable scourge of country/hip hop that gained recent popularity are all contributing factors.

I’ll admit, the genre does seem to be having a bit of a renaissance at the moment, much like the Seattle wave of grunge in the nineties, there is a good crop of authentic, folk-style country musicians who are popping up and gaining wide spread success right now.

But this doesn’t explain why it’s been resonating with me. As much as I hate this label, I’m a bit of a contrarian, and popular waves of this kind don’t tend to catch me. So I’ve been trying to figure out, why has Zach Bryan jumped to the top of my Apple music charts all of a sudden?

It’s the romance.

Hear me out on this.

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article confessing to a deficiency I recognized in my own writing—my ability to write about romance in a non-evasive way.

I won’t go into too much detail as to why I’m so intent on working on this particular weakness when I’ve got many others, but I’ll share this much: One Beta reader gave me the critique that the love interest element of my novel “lacked emotional punch.” Which I’ll acknowledge is probably true.

In any case, I’ve opened the lid on this subject in my own mind, so to speak. So I suppose it shouldn’t be too shocking that answers have found their way to me. It just took me off guard that this is the place they came from.

This is how it happened.

I was listening to a podcast on my way home from work, but when I got on the tube, my phone ran out of reception and whatever I was listening to cut out. A podcast I’d downloaded last November and forgotten about completely, suddenly started playing.

With nothing else to listen to, I was suddenly in the presence of Zach Bryan talking about his song writing process.

It sounded very familiar.

-Mapping out the cliches that seem like the natural next step, and deliberately taking an unexpected direction instead.

-Working against the impulse to sound “like a writer” and simplify instead.

-Running through different phrasing as you go about your day.

-Rushing to write them down when a good one pops up

All of this was intriguing enough to make me open up Apple music and listen to his back catalogue. Thank God I only learned later on that his big song Something in the Orange gained it’s fame on Tik Tok, because I never would have given it the time of day if I’d known that.¹

It was good. Closer to blues/folk than what I typically associate with “country” music. From there I downloaded his first album Sweet DeAnne and have worked my way up to his most recent singles.

While the fingerprints of producers and industry people are definitely present in some of his songs, for the most part his songwriting manages to avoid the disappointing turns for the worse that I described being so baffled by in my earlier Lewis Capaldi article.

On first listen, I was afraid this song was going to take that dreaded shift toward cliche, but when it reached the 1:46 mark, it did what its writer was paying lip service to in the interview I heard on that train. It took the song somewhere interesting: epistolary (or letter form) as the song’s chorus.²

But in my case, the draw was about more than good songs. There was something in this music that was familiar to me, something that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. It strangely makes me want to write when I listen to it.
Until it came to me…

A certain school of writing.

In my writers’ group, I have more than once received the feedback that my writing style is “physical.”

I’m not sure if this one was meant as a compliment, but it has also been described as “masculine” writing.

This isn’t by design. I actually write from the female perspective quite frequently, and some of my biggest compliments have come from pieces done in that voice.

I just try to write as well as I can, and however it lands is beyond my control.

But when you apply this feedback to my challenges with writing romance, suddenly it starts to fall together.

See, I’ve mistakenly been assuming that to go to this place of romance, requires me to take a more feminine approach to my writing. Y’know? Feelings and all that. Girl’s stuff right? I can make fun of it all I like, but that’s probably not far off the mark on how I was genuinely attempting to tackle this thing.

But bringing things back around to my recent Zach Bryan kick, I realize now that I don’t need to wander quite so far as this.

See I think that “familiar” thing I picked up in these songs, is recognition of a tradition I’m already well acquainted with—perhaps not always in music form, but a well established school of writing nonetheless:

Alumni include:

Ernest Hemingway, Joseph Conrad, Cormac McCarthy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and I think…Zach Bryan.

Now, I’m not saying this twenty-seven year old, four chord strummer deserves the credit of the above names, but he does share a certain “physical” style of phrasing with each of them—one that I’d say carries all the masculine elements that my writing has been described as possessing.

As much as we all like to think we’re all unique, nothing is 100% original and you can find archetypes for anything you’re attempting to do in life. Zach Bryan is tapping into the same water supply that I’m attempting to, and something in the back of my mind recognized that.

The difference is, these names all venture much further into romantic territory than I’ve attempted to so far, and I think a big part of what has been holding me back is my own lack mental framing. I’ve always considered “romance” to mean something else, and have shied away from it as a result.

But in works like Nostromo, All the Pretty Horses, November Air, we’re not talking Fabio book covers and sexy billionaire plotlines. It’s a different thing.

I’m not sure if any of this makes sense, but I just wanted to share where my thought process is currently sitting in terms of how I develop my writing. I think this new direction holds promise.

And I’m sorry if this type of thinking comes off a bit antiquated (I can already hear the criticism, “literally all of those names are old white males!”) but the the literary world is filled with so much pretentiousness, and veiled judgement, that it’s hard to see where someone like me might fit in at times, so I’ve got no choice but to reach for archetypes where I can find them. These ones seem like good company to keep.

1. Apparently it exploded during Covid and he rose to fame. But I missed it entirely. Thank God.

2. This is the form I open my novel with, so perhaps I’ve got a soft spot for it.