From a job at a meat processing plant to country music stardom, Bailey Zimmerman is figuring it out

NEW YORK -- 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.”

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.”