Walker Hayes looped back on Wednesday (Jan. 24) to his recent Twitter beef with Zach Bryan.
It all started on Jan. 9 when Bryan quote-tweeted Whiskey Riff's post about "In Your Love" becoming the first Childers song to chart on mainstream country radio. Bryan wrote that Childers' prior absence from the airwaves was "insane" because the Kentucky-bred talent is "one of the best songwriters to ever do it."
Bryan then piled on country radio with a joking reference to "Fancy Like."
"Imagine being radio (whoever the hell that is), hearing 'Shake the Frost' and being like 'no, no, let's go with the Applebees song'," Bryan wrote.
At least one follower took exception with Bryan's "Applebees song" dismissal.
"You're not wrong, but don't do Walker dirty like that. Another great songwriter," the Twitter user wrote.
"Not insulting anyone! Meant it with humor not malice, different strokes different folks was just bent about the first ever on mainstream radio thing my bad," Bryan responded.
About six hours after Bryan's series of tweets, Hayes chimed in.
"Big shout to radio for playing dat Applebees song," Hayes wrote. "Zach and Tyler praying y'alls continued success."
Now, Hayes further processed the situation through a song he shared on Instagram.
"Me and my buddies were talking about the whole Zach Bryan thing," the caption read. "They were saying they appreciated how I responded. I confessed that they only saw my best foot forward.I had a hundred smart ass responses in the chamber that I didn't fire off. Then we got to talking about people in general. Why we get insecure, etc. Mostly about how artists size each other up, compare and talk trash. It's obviously our natural human tendency to be a little butt hurt by anyone else's success. Then we wondered about that. Why on earth we would do that as song writers. Knowing that .0001 percent of us are actually making it in this biz. Took me 18 years to feed my kids with music and I'll still knock something I hear on the radio cuz I didn't write it. So, we tried our best to put it all in a twanger. And this is what we got. I hope it makes y'all talk about stuff that matters."
Though he's a little more pointed in his comments this time, Hayes still comes across as polite.
"Woke up this morning, read something mean/ Something in the orange says you're feeling green," his the lyrics go. "Felt like throwing punches/ I just held 'em bac / Because Jesus didn't die for me so I could fight with Zach."
