Theres a meme going around this week about the worst solo I have ever heard. Zac Brown must have seen it and thought, Hold my beer.
On Friday, the country singer and leader of the Zac Brown Band released a surprise solo project dubbed The Controversy that contains a contender for the worst cluster of sounds ever committed to digital file: a WTF bedroom-rap track titled Swayze. As in Patrick.
Brown doesnt claim his new LP is country a press release trumpets it as his first-ever solo pop album and its released under his own name. But in any genre, Swayze would be considered as bad as the dude who kills his character in Ghost.
I cant be your Tom Cruise, bitch, Im Patrick Swayze! Brown shouts to open the song, drawing some fakakta comparison between the two actors before going on to shoehorn a litany of their film titles into the lyrics.
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Know you want that Top Gun, but I just came to have some fun, he sings, crashing and burning with his big dick allusion. Might be bouncing in a Roadhouse, Brown continues, saluting the songs titular hero, even Dirty Dancing getting naked. No, thank you, really.
But its the chorus of Swayze that lowers the bar into the earths crust, with Brown somehow finding a way to be both sexist and awkward all at once. Every time I get a new bitch, I need a new bitch, he boasts. And boasts. Why? Because, Im so Swayze. As a colleague of mine asked, Patrick died of cancer cant we leave him out of this?
Alas, no.
The rest of The Controversy, no doubt named in expectation of the blowback hell receive for going so far off the country grid, isnt terrible. This Far is a satisfying slice of dreamy yacht pop; the breezy Spend It All delivers an irresistible rhythm; and Always and Never is a gorgeous piano ballad with a superb falsetto from Brown.
Still, its hard to grasp how he, or the songs collaborator Sasha Sirota (who produced the Justin Bieber/R. Kelly track PYD), thought Swayze should ever see the light of day. Maybe thats why Brown is pictured tentatively peering out from underneath a hood on The Controversys album art, looking to see if the coast is clear to unleash this departure on the fans hes amassed with hits like Highway 20 Ride and Homegrown.
Dressed in fur, he comes across like a lost member of the Starks. But Swayze is just one big Game of Groans.