Country superstar Zach Bryan announces first Australian show
The dust is just settling from Luke Combs’ sold-out national tour, but country music fans will need to saddle up once more with fellow superstar Zach Bryan set to visit Australia in December.
Bryan will perform one show only on December 9 in St Kilda’s Catani Gardens as part of the state government’s Always Live program. The performance will mark Bryan’s debut in Australia and caps off a remarkable twelve months for the 27-year-old.
US country music megastar Zach Bryan will be heading to Australia for the first time this December.
Last year Bryan’s major-label debut album, American Heartbreak, entered the Billboard 200 at number five. However, it was his self-titled album in 2023 that truly catapulted him to superstardom, debuting at number one on the Billboard charts and helping him notch up more than one billion Spotify streams.
His collaboration with Kacey Musgraves I Remember Everything also hit number one on the Billboard singles chart last month.
In addition to his first number-one record, Bryan’s song Something In The Orange became a global phenomenon. It spent 66 weeks on the Billboard charts to become the longest-charting country hit by a solo male in history. It was also nominated for Best Country Solo Performance at this year’s Grammy Awards.
That success was matched here in Australia with Something In The Orange breaking the record for a country song on the ARIA Top 50 Singles Chart. The song spent 46 weeks on the ARIA charts, outperforming Morgan Wallen’s Last Night and Luke Combs’ Fast Car.
Luke Combs is leading the country crossover into the mainstream. His Australian tour was one of the fastest selling tours of the year in 2023.Credit: Wolter Peeters
Supported by the Victorian government through Visit Victoria, Always Live will see some of the biggest names in music, including Christina Aguilera, Eric Prydz and Jai Paul, perform exclusively in Melbourne as part of a 17-day festival.
Bryan’s addition to the bill is further proof that Australia’s burgeoning love affair with country music has expanded into the mainstream.
Once viewed as a genre that existed in a vacuum – there are music fans, and there are country music fans – country has experienced a resurgence over the last two years with artists like Zach Bryan, Luke Combs, Morgan Wallen and Kacey Musgraves experiencing mainstream chart success.
Combs has been arguably responsible for blazing the trail, and according to data provided by Spotify, his monthly streams in Australia increased by 101 per cent between July 2022 and July 2023.
So, it was hardly surprising when his national tour sold an astounding 90,000 tickets within a couple of hours, making his Forever After All tour one of the fastest-selling Australian shows of the year. In July this year, country stars Morgan Wallen and Luke Combs joined the likes of Taylor Swift, Drake and The Weeknd as Australia’s top five most-streamed artists.
According to Alicia Sbrugnera, Spotify’s Head of Music in Australia and New Zealand, it’s confirmation that the crossover is complete.
“Pop music is the most streamed genre of music for Australians on Spotify, but country music falls within the top ten most streamed genres, and Australia has remained in the top three global markets for country music consumption since 2018,” she says.
The success in Australia mirrors the frenzy in North America. In the last twelve months, Bryan, Combs, and Wallen have each held the top spot on the Billboard charts.
Shake It Off? Country artists Luke Combs and Morgan Wallen joined Taylor Swift as one of the top five most streamed artists in Australia this July, according to data from Spotify. Credit: Getty
In welcome news for homegrown artists, the influx of American acts on the charts (and on our shores), has a trickle-on effect.
“Our very own Australian country music export Morgan Evans, who first made headlines in 2018 for his song Kiss Somebody, experienced a 67 per cent increase in global streams in the past year,” says Sbrugnera.
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