ZAC BROWN BAND

                                                              "Out in the Middle" 

                                                               Home Grown Music/Warner Nashville

After initially using the song back in July of 2021 as a teaser ahead of their then upcoming album, the Zac Brown Band has now officially named “Out in the Middle” as their next proper single release from The Comeback – following their most recent #1 charting song, “Same Boat.”

The two-minute and forty-six second romp, co-written by Brown with Luke Combs, Jonathan Singleton, and Benjamin Simonetti, is full of boot stomping grit and swampy country edge that perfectly plucks from the group’s Southern rock tilt while encompassing their big, arena-rock anthem like style as we push into the chorus. 

The small-town anthem uses its verses to take you straight to the middle of nowhere through descriptive lyrics that tell you exactly where it is as Brown sings:

“There's an old rural route two-lane
Take it out past where the radio just can't
Past the river bridge with a rope swing
And a mailbox painted all John Deere green.”

However, avoiding the cliché that generally comes with a song like this, the true heart is revealed when Brown shifts the focus from the place itself, to the people who call it home and carry its country ideals in their everyday being. 

There are the expected lines in the second verse about having a Friday night party, and the obligatory namechecking of Hank, but the chorus hammers home the depth of the song when Brown uses its lines to define the people as being:

“Out in the middle where the hard work meets hard living
Out in the middle where we're grown 'til we're gone, God willing
Just some good old boys and good old girls
Hunting red dirt dreams in a concrete world
Getting by on just a little, out in the middle.”

What the Zac Brown Band has always excelled at is taking a small-town anthem and making it relatable to any blue-collar person no matter where they’re located.

While there are some aspects of this song that will surely help it get lumped into the been there, done that category by some of the more casual listeners, this is also a song that is going to lyrically relate to the working class while providing an ultra-catchy rhythm to entice the listener to stop the radio dial and perk up their ears to listen.

(Review Written By: Jeffrey Kurtis)

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