Bailey Zimmerman – The Weight of Wanting
Bailey Zimmerman’s rise from the rough-and-ready backroads of Illinois to the bright lights of country music’s biggest stages wasn’t carved from a blueprint — it came gut-first.
With a voice like cracked leather and lyrics soaked in heartbreak, Bailey Zimmerman has bulldozed his way into the genre’s core without ever losing sight of what set him apart: the honesty, the ache, and the gravel in his gut.
Heavy boots on fresh concrete. That’s the feeling you get listening to Bailey Zimmerman. There’s momentum in his music — not just in the number of streams or tour dates, but in the way his songs drive forward, heavy-hearted and unrelenting. Even when they ache, they move. And movement, for Zimmerman, has never been optional.
Long before he became a country chart staple, Zimmerman was working on gas pipelines and posting truck cab videos on TikTok. Raised in small-town Louisville, Illinois, he’d clock a full day on the job before singing straight into his phone. It wasn’t a marketing strategy — it was a release. As he once revealed, he thought he was going to build gas pipelines for the rest of his life.
Instead, one of those videos — a raw vocal run on a song that would become “Fall In Love” — caught fire. And in 2022, the heartbreak anthem shot to No. 1 on the Country Airplay charts, making him the fastest debut artist to top that chart in seven years.
Zimmerman’s rise was fast, but not fluked. With no formal music background, he crafted his debut album, Religiously. The Album., from instinct and grit. Released in May 2023, it debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard Country Albums chart and spawned multiple hits, including “Rock and a Hard Place.” The track, a bruising ballad of romantic stalemate, landed in the Billboard Hot 100’s Top 10 and became a multi-platinum juggernaut.
His songwriting process, by his own account, isn’t guided by formulas or co-writing workshops. Instead, Zimmerman has described it as trying to get the truth out of my head before it chokes him. He tends to record voice memos and rough takes as soon as the emotion hits, sometimes capturing the chorus before the story has a setting. This rawness gives his music its punch — a kind of emotional timestamp that hasn’t been buffed smooth.
Zimmerman has credited artists like Morgan Wallen and Post Malone with helping him find a voice that could carry both country grit and contemporary urgency. He’s said that genre lines don’t interest him as much as emotional clarity, and that what matters is whether a song feels honest enough to hurt. That outlook has shaped his blend of country, rock and modern pop, helping him carve a lane that resists pigeonholing.
To read the full article, see our last issue here.
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