Zach Top may have been born in 1997, but all his favorite country artists were charting long before then. The 26-year-old singer-songwriter drew heavily from ’90s country on his sophomore album, Cold Beer and Country Music, which dropped in April. With recent covers like Gary Stewart’s “She’s Actin’ Single (I’m Drinkin’ Doubles),” Top has proven that you can embody a musical era despite not having been born in it. Recently, the Washington native took a dip into early-millennium country waters with his rendition of Billy Currington’s 2006 hit.
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See Zach Top Cover This Billy Currington Hit
Written by Luke Bryan and Rachel Thibodeau, “Good Directions” is a breezy summer anthem centered around a man selling turnips at a roadside stand. A beautiful woman stops to ask him for directions to the interstate. And the rest quickly becomes history.
Country artist Billy Currington released the song in September 2006 as the third and final single from his sophomore album, Doin’ Somethin’ Right. “Good Directions” landed Currington at the top of the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart for only the second time.
However, the song may now officially belong to Zach Top. The “Sounds Like the Radio” singer made “Good Directions” entirely his own during a show earlier this summer. The sold-out crowd at The Sinclair in Cambridge, Massachusetts sang along: I told her, “Way up yonder past the caution light / There’s a little country store with an old Coke sign / You got to stop in and ask Miss Bell for some of her sweet tea / Then a left will take you to the interstate / But a right will bring you right back here to me.”
“Zach is the best artist in country music these days,” one fan gushed on YouTube. “What can’t this young man sing and not sound amazing?”
[RELATED: Watch Zach Top Join Billy Strings for a Bluegrass Jam at the Under the Big Sky Festival]
Top Reflects On Success: “It Feels Like A Switch Flipped”
Zach Top exploded onto country music radio in January with his breakout hit “Sounds Like the Radio.” On Thursday (July 18), he performed before a sold-out crowd for his first-ever headlining gig at Joe’s On Weed St. in Chicago.
“It feels like a switch flipped in the spring,” Top told Country Now. “Up until then we’re booking 300 cap rooms and were like, if we get 150 people in here, it’ll feel great. We’ll have a fun time.
“Then, we’re starting to see, you know, we’ve been playing three weeks straight of sold-out shows now… it’s like, s—, people are paying attention now. So it’s fun.”
Featured image by John D Shearer/Shutterstock
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