Photo Credit: Zach Bryan performing at Crypto.com Arena by Katrina Paisano
Zach Bryan is officially boycotting the 2025 Grammys and refusing to submit his music for consideration. Rather than responding to a snub, however, the singer apparently dislikes the concept of making music competitive.
Country sensation Zach Bryan is notably absent from the massive ballot that recently went out to Grammy voters — specifically available only to Recording Academy members and not the general public — after having declined to submit his work for consideration in any category for the 2025 awards ceremony.
A search of the online ballot by Recording Academy members revealed that Bryan’s name does not appear among the thousands of submissions. Similarly, his albums and songs are not entered for any of the rock, country, or Americana categories in which his work would be most likely to appear. Sources close to the situation confirmed Bryan opted not to submit this year, citing discomfort with awards shows “making music competitive.”
To be fair, that tracks with Bryan’s notably lukewarm attitude toward the music industry, but he has never declined to submit his work for consideration for awards in the past. But he joins the company of the select few elite musicians who have decided to sit it out, namely Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye and Drake (though Drake has since walked back his boycott).
Interestingly, while The Weeknd made the choice after having been shut out of nominations entirely during the year his monster hit “Blinding Lights” exploded on the scene, Zach Bryan made his choice hot on the heels of having won a Grammy earlier in the year.
Bryan’s duet with Kacey Musgraves, “I Remember Everything,” won him his 2024 Grammy, his first, for Best Country Duo/Group Performance. He has received four nominations altogether, with three of those having taken place last year, and one the year prior. Each of his noms was in the country genre, though Bryan does not consider himself strictly a country musician.
A boycott of the process does fit Bryan’s decision to further withdraw from the “music industry machine,” which he has done by asking his label Warner not to promote his music. But he has remained firmly in the zeitgeist in spite of it — and despite a brief controversy last month when he made a comment on social media that he preferred the music of disgraced rapper Kanye West to that of megastar Taylor Swift. He has since apologized and walked back the remark.
