Country crooner Zach Bryan has addressed the intense backlash to his new anti-ICE song that created a MAGA uproar.
Bryan dropped a snippet of the unreleased track on Instagram last Friday, with lyrics that included, “I heard the cops came, cocky motherf---ers ain’t they?/And ICE is gonna come bust down your door/Try to build a house, no bills no more, well I got a telephone/Kids are all scared and all alone.”
The outrage went all the way to the White House, with spokesperson Abigail Jackson slamming the reference to ICE in a statement to Newsweek on Tuesday.
“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. Godspeed, Zach!” Jackson said, name checking many of Bryan’s songs.
Writing on his Instagram Stories on Tuesday, Bryan explained that the song will make more sense when heard in context with the full lyrics, saying, “Everyone using this now as a weapon is only proving how devastatingly divided we all are. “We need to find our way back.”
The 29-year-old added, “I love this country and the song itself is about all of us coming out of this divided space... To see how much s--t it stirred up makes me not only embarrassed but kind of scared. Left wing or right wing we’re all one bird and American. To be clear I’m on neither of these radical sides.
“To all those disappointed in me on either side of what you believe in just know I’m trying my best too and we all say things that are misconstrued sometimes.”
Bryan, who swapped a career in the Navy for music, last month broke the record for the largest ticketed show in U.S. history, selling 112,408 tickets at Michigan Stadium.
In a follow-up Story, Bryan hinted at controversies that had led him to being “scrutinized by more people than I ever thought possible.” Bryan has been involved in an ongoing feud with fellow country star Gavin Adcock, with the pair swapping insults online and during interviews. It came to a head last month when Bryan scaled a fence at a festival in Oklahoma to confront Adcock, before security guards separated the pair.
Bryan noted in his Instagram story, “I am SO proud to have served in a country where we can all speak freely and converse amongst each other without getting doxxed or accosted on the internet or worse; the violence and heartbreak we’ve faced in the last few months!”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
An ICE spokeswoman referred the Daily Beast to an X post by Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, which read, “Stick to Pink Skies, dude.”
