UPDATED: Zach Bryan has left X (formerly Twitter), at least for now, after stirring up a hornet’s nest by tweeting that he preferred Kanye West over Taylor Swift – a post he later apologized for, saying he was drunk at the time.
Although he appears to have left X, Bryan took to his Instagram Stories in the early hours of Thursday morning to issue a fervent apology, saying, “I never want anyone to think I had even the slightest hint of malice or meanness towards anyone. … I’ve been through a rough time in my life and I think I was projecting a bit. To be perfectly honest, it just came across as rude and desensitized to Taylor. I respect her so much as a musician that the last thing I want is for people to think I don’t appreciate and love what she’s done for music.” He then repeated the phrase “Don’t drink and tweet!” twice.
The singer-songwriter superstar’s tweets sometimes range from playful to overtly provocative, and Tuesday night’s Ye/Swift tweet seemed clearly intended to provoke people, however light-hearted it may have been.
The original tweet first included a mild insult to Swift’s boyfriend Travis Kelce’s football team – “Eagles > Chiefs” – and then added “Kanye > Taylor… Who agrees with me?”
Given Swift’s status as the world’s most popular singer and Yes as the music world’s most reviled anti-Semite, Bryan surely knew he would get a backlash, and he did. On Wednesday, he deactivated his account, but not before offering a mea culpa before stepping down from the platform.
“Guys I love Taylor,” Bryan claimed in his follow-up tweet. He said he was “listening to TTPD (‘The Tortured Poets Department’) last night and ‘Thank You Aimee’ came on and I drunkenly tweeted that about Kanye. If anyone was serious, please know that I love both artists very much and think we are in a really beautiful time in music.”
The Swift song mentioned by Bryan was widely viewed as a diss track against Kim Kardashian, a belated response to allegations the reality star publicly made against Swift in 2017 in defense of her then-husband West.
Despite leaving X, Bryan has not deactivated his Instagram account, where he left evidence that he was more focused on Ye than Swift, despite saying on the other platform that he had been listening to “Tortured Poets.” In his story, Bryan posted screenshots of three West songs he had accessed on Spotify and apparently liked, including “I Thought About Killing Somebody.”
But while the furore surrounding his comments continued even during his absence from Twitter, he returned to his Instagram stories in the middle of the night Thursday morning to explain himself and apologize in more detail – in a text that spanned four separate images.
“To the record people: I wasn’t here for Taylor the other day,” Bryan began. “I was drunk comparing two records and it came out wrong. I know there are a lot of things floating around Ye and I was speaking purely musically. I love Taylor’s music and pray you know I’m human and often tweet stupid things. Hopefully I can explain that to her one day. Twitter gets me in trouble too often and I’d say it’s best if I stay away from it. I’m sorry to any Taylor fans I’ve upset or disappointed. I love you and I’m doing my best!”
In a follow-up post, he wrote, “I’ve been going through a rough time in my life and I think I was projecting a little bit. To be completely honest, it just came across as rude and desensitized to Taylor. I respect her so much as a musician that I definitely don’t want people to think I don’t appreciate and love what she’s done as a musician. Okay, that’s it! I love you guys and hope you understand. Don’t drink and tweet. Don’t drink and tweet!!”
He wasn’t finished yet. “I don’t want to save face here, but Taylor has been a force of nature since we were all growing up and I admire that. I’m going to listen to that record now” – accompanied by a picture of her song “Castles Crumbling”. “I never want people to think I’m even remotely mean or nasty to anyone, that’s why I’m saying all this. I wish you all the best day ever, I love you.”
Bryan added, “This year has been really tough on me in a personal way that nobody knows about and I’ve been trying to deal with and juggle too many things at once. So I’m going to take a break from tweeting stupid stuff, finish my tour and kind of ground myself in the midst of all of this. I feel very, very blessed every day. It’s been so important to me to not take it for granted and to hold on to it. OK, I had to get that off my chest, you guys are the best and I’ll see you at Bourbon and Beyond” (an upcoming festival).
At the time of this writing, Bryan’s X page reads “This account does not exist,” although anyone who deactivates an account on the site has the option to restart it within 30 days, and most fans assume the moody singer will be back.
Bryan may not be lying when he says he really likes Swift’s music too, even if she was on the wrong side of the arrow in his unsolicited comparison in the Ye equation. In the past, he has posted about Swift in a more positive light. In late 2022, when her album “Midnights” came out, he tweeted, “Miss Swift what’s the vibe at midnight good morning everyone and happy almost weekend come on in we’re leaving crying.” When a fan asked him his favorite Swift song, he said, “‘August’ for sure.”
Earlier this week, Bryan caused controversy on X by suggesting he would prefer artists not to engage in politics, as Swift did when she endorsed Kamala Harris for president. “Anyone willing to put politics above music doesn’t understand the point of listening to music,” Bryan tweeted. Many users responded by posting recordings of classic protest songs by Bob Dylan and others.
Bryan and Swift are once again sharing the top 10 spot on the Billboard 200 album chart this week, with “The Tortured Poets Department” at No. 5 after 21 weeks and Bryan’s “The Great American Bar Scene” at No. 7 after 11 weeks. Ye’s latest effort isn’t doing so well, though, so maybe he could use Bryan’s morale boost. “Vultures 2,” the hip-hop superstar’s latest collaboration with Ty Dolla Sign, is completely off the Billboard 200 after six weeks.
