Ain't In It For My Health

Album ∙ Traditional Country ∙ 2025

Zach Top

The speed and suddenness of Zach Top’s rise to stardom isn’t lost on him. The country sensation’s debut album, 2024’s Cold Beer & Country Music, earned Top an ever-growing legion of fans, who love the Washington-born singer-songwriter’s traditionally informed, ’90s-tinged sound and his undeniable chops as a singer and player. On this sophomore outing, Top loosens up his approach, dipping into the sunny sounds of Jimmy Buffett and Kenny Chesney while celebrating living the life he’d dreamed of as an aspiring singer-songwriter. “With this record, it’s like I’ve lived a little more, and so I have a little more to say,” Top tells Apple Music. “There’s just a little more depth to it, I think. It goes a couple layers deeper than the first record, which I love and I’m very proud of it. But I think there’s more meat on the bone with Ain’t In It for My Health.”

Lead single “Good Times & Tan Lines” splits the difference between Buffett’s beachiness and Alan Jackson’s no-frills twang, with blessedly traditional production from Top’s longtime collaborator Carson Chamberlain that puts fiddle and steel front and center. Other highlights include the tequila-soaked heartbreaker “Flip--Flop,” which shows off Top’s playful sense of humor, and closing track “Honky Tonk Till It Hurts,” a love letter to country music with shades of ZZ Top (no relation). Below, Top shares insight into a few key tracks.

“Between the Ditches”
“My parents have been very supportive, but definitely aren’t shy about telling me I’m being an idiot if I’m being an idiot. So, there’s that. I’m close with all my siblings, and very thankful to have good relationships with all of my family. Then I’ve got some good old friends that knew me before, who haven’t changed their attitude toward me because of any sort of success and whatnot.”

“Flip--Flop”
“With anything that’s kind of like a goofy song, it is a fine line where it starts to get way off into cornball/cheese world. So [I like] having a song that actually says a little something still but can have that humor. I’m very sarcastic, try to be funny, cutting up, joking all the time.”

“South of Sanity”
“I played a couple shows with Red Clay Strays. We’d already done our show and they were going on after us, and I was supposed to go up and do a song with them. I got a call with some bad news and I was sitting over on the side of the stage or standing in the wings, one song left, and then I was going out, and I’m trying not to bawl my eyes out. Then it’s like, ‘Put your phone back in your pocket, take a drag on a cigarette, and let’s go sing.’ Where it started, I had a marriage that didn’t work out. When I first moved here I was married, and yeah, I messed that up. So that’s part of that song too.”

“Lovin’ the Wrong Things”
“When you’re dreaming about [making] it, you’re just thinking about the bright lights and the thousands of people that are out there. And that’s such a small fraction of the actual work. Your schedule can get out of hand, you can get run into the ground and worn out and then start looking for a way to cope with it, I guess. A lot of times there’s a lot of options that aren’t necessarily terribly healthy. Free drinks all night up on the stage until you realize it don’t help you sing and play. I think that’s a perfect representation of, I assume, what I feel like a lot of young artists do. They catch a little success, then all of a sudden it’s like, ‘Holy cow, we’re lit. There’s no rules. It’s wide open. Just go hog wild. Go crazy.’ Then that can damage the thing that got you that little bit of success in the first place, which is rather short-sighted.”