Country singer Zach Bryan gets a piece of conservative outrage this week for mentioning Immigration and Customs Enforcement in a yet-unreleased song titled “Bad News.” Bryan, who previously said his music isn’t political, shared the new track on Instagram October 3 amid mass-deportation efforts and captioned it “the fading of the red white and blue.”
Below, what Zach Bryan says in his new song and other musicians who have spoken out against ongoing ICE raids.
What does the song say?
In the snippet of the track, posted as a screen recording of the file, he sings, “My friends are all degenerates, but they’re all I got / The generational story of dropping the plot / I heard the cops came / Cocky motherfuckers, ain’t they?” It’s a typical Bryan joint: moody and twangy, sung with weight. He continues, “ICE is gonna come bust down your door / Try to build a house, no one builds no more, well I got a telephone / Kids are all scared and all alone.” Overall, the snippet sounds like an elegy for Bryan’s vision of America.
The same day Bryan shared the song, immigration enforcement arrested 13 people in Chicago, per AP News. Earlier that same week, on September 30, ICE invaded a Chicago apartment building and detained 37 people. Those arrested in Chicago during a mass deployment of troops in Chicago number in the hundreds, per the New York Times, and include at least four children.
What did the White House have to say?
“While Zach Bryan wants to Open The Gates to criminal illegal aliens and has Condemned heroic ICE officers, Something in the Orange tells me a majority of Americans disagree with him and support President Trump’s great American Revival,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement, per Newsweek. “Godspeed, Zach!”
What other celebrities have spoken out?
Other music artists who have spoken out about ICE raids across the country include Bad Bunny, who refused to tour the nation out of fear for his fans. “There was the issue of — like, fucking ICE could be outside (my concert),” he told i-D, “and it’s something that we were talking about and very concerned about.” After ICE raids in Los Angeles led to protests in June, Doechii addressed “ruthless attacks that are creating fear and chaos in our communities in the name of law and order” while at the BET Awards. At the time, Shakira said to the BBC that living as an immigrant in the U.S. “means living in constant fear.” “Now, more than ever, we have to raise our voices and make it very clear that a country can change its immigration policies, but the treatment of all people must always be humane,” she stated.
So when’s the song out?
The song does not have a release date yet. Now that’s bad news.
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The country star addresses mass-deportation efforts in a rare political song.
