Zac Brown to people who don't understand his music: 'I guess it went over their heads'

Zac Brown is baffled that people get angry when they don’t like his music.

Lately, it’s a feeling with which he’s become quite familiar.

“I would love for people to really listen and artistically understand my music,” he said. “I realize it’s an impossibility.”

Brown, who broke through with the country karaoke anthem “Chicken Fried” more than a decade ago, has spent years weaving the influences of outside genres into Zac Brown Band’s music. Some efforts are more overt than others. In 2015, the band’s album “Jekyll & Hyde” included the Chris Cornell collaboration “Heavy Is the Head” that was released in the rock format. In 2016, Brown revealed plans for an EDM group, “Sir Roosevelt.” In 2019, he released the genre-bending “The Owl” with Zac Brown Band then pole-vaulted out of the country format with his solo feat “The Controversy.” Both albums are available now.

“It’s a matter of what other people have been exposed to,” he said. “If all they’ve known is to hate things that are foreign to them and to not listen for something that moves them and to be open, they’re (not going to understand). I think my traveling has given me the ability to be open and take in so many different things. All of those tastes combine into making me who I am. I’ll dive deep into someone’s music and … I’ll start to realize what’s really good about something.”

Brown points to his Max Martin collaboration “God Given” on “The Owl” as an example of a song that people misconstrue. While “God Given” opens with a celebration of the superficial, the turn is that what is most attractive is God-given.

Lyrics include: Gucci bag, stacks on stacks/ Diamonds fill up the champagne glass/ Veyron whip, G5 high/You have class that they just can’t buy/'Cause damn, girl, what you got is God given

“It’s a girl who is beautiful in her own confidence,” Brown explained. “When people don’t listen to the lyrics or don’t get it … for some people, I guess it went over their heads.”

“Swayze,” a ditty from “The Controversy,” drew extreme critical ire and accusations of being flippant and misogynistic.

Brown collaborated with Sasha Sirota on the song and thinks people should lighten up.

Lyrics include: I know you want that Top Gun/But I just came to have some fun/Uh huh, your mission is impossible/Trying to be the only one/ I can’t be your Tom Cruise.

“It’s absolutely meant for nothing other than to laugh and have a good time,” Brown said. “It makes you want to dance around. For me, that’s enough.”

“OMW” from “The Owl” is a collaboration with Poo Bear and Skrillex that Brown said is about spirit and reminds him of “what a modern-day Stevie Wonder track would sound like.”

From a man responsible for more than one dozen No. 1 country hits, “OMW” isn’t country, either.

“You can’t please everyone,” he said. “I go back to this speech that Teddy Roosevelt did called ‘Man in the Arena,’ and the first line reminds me to have the courage to make what I want to make as an artist. It’s not the critic who counts.”

However, he said, if listeners will give “The Owl” a chance, there are plenty of country offerings.

“Leaving Love Behind” is a tender, mournful piano ballad that reflects on happier times in a relationship. Brown, a father of five, split from his wife of 12 years in 2018. In the song, he sings: “I believe, yes I do/The hardest part is always leaving love behind/ I believe, yes I do/That everything we lose will be a gift in time/But the hardest part is leaving love behind.

“There’s nothing that a country purist could hate about that song,” he said.

“Finish What We Started” is sparkling duet with Brandi Carlile that is also about the end of a relationship.

"I put myself on a fence and just bled out there for those two songs," he revealed. "I feel like now, even within my own family, that everyone’s life is better because of it and everything has turned this corner."

He said “Me and the Boys in the Band” is a country song. “Someone I Used to Know” is a reflective mid-tempo about turning his life around.

“‘Someone I Used to Know’ is a touchpoint to remind people that they don’t have to be alone in what they feel,” he said at the end of the band’s CMT award-winning video. “Pain and depression doesn’t discriminate. This song is me facing that part of myself of where I want to go and not where I’ve been. I would encourage people that when they feel like they have a voice telling them to face something, it’s a sign of strength to ask for help.”

"The Warrior" is another song from "The Owl" that is a nod at Brown's heart. While the video for "Someone I Used to Know" features a soldier trying to reacclimated to civilian life, "The Warrior" was written about one. Brown said that during some time spent with members of the Special Forces, he met

“The Owl” is for everyone, he said, if they will give it a chance. He made “The Controversy” because he had a group of songs he wanted to release that were decidedly not country. The album earned its name because he knew it would be controversial.

“It’s pretty often in my journey that people tell me that I need to decide what kind of artist I’m going to be,” Brown said. “I’ve been able to hold my own identity through that process, and I just hope that other people have the ability to be themselves.”

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Zac Brown says 'The Owl' is for 'everyone' if they give it a chance