From a job at a meat processing plant to country music stardom, Bailey
Zimmerman is figuring it out
[August 05, 2025]
By MARIA SHERMAN
NEW YORK (AP) — His is a Cinderella story.
Before the big tours and country music award nominations, Bailey
Zimmerman was growing up in the small town of Louisville, Illinois,
working at the local meat processing plant and laying gas pipeline.
Then, in 2020, he decided to upload videos of himself singing to social
media — Black Stone Cherry's “Stay,” and, later, an original.
He quickly garnered a fan base on TikTok. It wasn't overnight, but it
was fast. Soon, he inked a deal with Warner Music Nashville and released
his debut full-length, 2023's “Religiously. The Album.” It peaked at No.
7 on the all-genre Billboard 200 chart and was certified two-times
platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. Now comes
Friday, when he follows it up with a sophomore offering, “Different
Night Same Rodeo.”
“I don't know what I'm doing,” Zimmerman, 25, tells The Associated Press
through a smile. “I randomly got into music in 2020, 2021, and I’d never
sang before. I’d never wrote songs before.”
After “Religiously. The Album.” did well — something he didn't see
coming — Zimmerman found himself trying to recreate it while writing for
his second album. “It just didn't work,” he says. “I just found myself
not really writing that great of songs because I’m trying to write other
songs that have already been written.”
So, he took a step back, and asked himself: “What am I trying to do with
my music? And what is the whole goal of this next album?” The answer was
simple: He wanted to tell stories from his life.
“You didn't know what you were doing the first time. And you don't know
what you're doing now,” he told himself. “So just write songs that you
love and try to write songs that you feel like people can relate to, you
know, stories from things I’ve been through.”
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Bailey Zimmerman poses for a portrait on Thursday, July 24, 2025, in
Los Angeles. (Photo by Rebecca Cabage/Invision/AP)
 On “Different Night Same Rodeo,”
those stories are told in big-hearted ballads (“Hell or High
Water”), good time stomps (“New to Country”) and varied
collaborations, including with country star Luke Combs (“Backup
Plan”), the rising pop voice the Kid LAROI (“Lost”), and Diplo
(“Ashes”). He's always been open to such eclectic collaborations,
anchored in his raspy, charismatic tone — Zimmerman's highest
charting song to date is “All The Way,” a hip-hop-country hybrid he
features on with rapper BigXThaPlug.
For his second album, Zimmerman wanted to make sure he worked with
artists he had true relationships with. For Combs, he knew the
singer would be perfect for the fiery “Backup Plan” — he just never
thought he'd meet him. Then, Combs invited Zimmerman to perform at
his Hurricane Helene relief benefit “Concert for Carolina.” They hit
it off, and the rest is history. The Kid LAROI (“We're like the same
person,” Zimmerman says) and Diplo (“Sometimes things just feel like
God's plan,” he says) were partnerships that also happened
organically.
“When I collaborate, I just want it to be a real friendship,” he
says. “And I want it to feel real, because it comes across not real
when it’s not.”
For an artist who describes himself as “dealing with a little bit of
impostor syndrome,” he seems to know, at least intuitively, what
works for himself and his fans.
“The main reason I write music is so people know they’re not alone
and that I’ve been through the things that they’ve been through,
too,” he says. “I think that’s what I started my whole career on,
was people relating to me kind of ‘therapy writing,'” he says.
“'Different Night Same Rodeo' — it's the fluctuation of life. It’s
the ups and the downs, the mountains, the valleys, but we’re still
on a good vibe.”
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