Isn't It Pretty To Think So?
If an Exhibit A is needed as proof that Zach Bryan is one of the finest working songwriters, then "When you place your head between my collar and jaw / I don't know much but there's no weight at all / And I'm damned if I do and I'm damned if I don't / 'cause if I say I miss you I know that you won't" is it. The first couplet is so vivid and hyper-specific, a proprioceptive shred of muscle memory that Hemingway might've expressed only slightly differently in prose form (recalling in particular that quietly devastating final scene with Jake and Brett in The Sun Also Rises). The second couplet is mundane almost to the point of sounding platitudinous, yet coming right after the lines that precede it, its plainness and frankness cut deeply. It's a wound that's still raw, one that may never totally heal. It's a tragedy of the most ordinary, everyday kind, though with the weight of recognizing that its ordinariness does nothing to blunt its impact. It's a shrug; not of indifference but of defeat because, notwithstanding whatever he thinks he sees "in the orange," she's not going to "turn those headlights around."
