Election Analysis: Gen Z Men Turn to Christianity, as Women Embrace Witchcraft, Yellowstone Creator Makin Singing Competition Show?!, Murdering Family Members over the Election (The Five for 11/15/24)
Plus 62-year-old Tom Cruise wants to keep playing a spy in the Mission Impossible series. The most surprising Christmas song of 2024...is a punk/R&B mashup. Zach Bryan proves that silence is golden.
Hey, welcome to The Five, a publication about the stories that matter, but don’t always make the front page.
It’s Friday, so let’s dive into Culture & Commentary.
[one]
Well, this keeps getting weirder. Independent country mega-star Zach Bryan and podcaster Briana Chickenfry broke up. Which is not something I’d ever write about….except it’s a great example of how staying silent is often better PR than over-explaining.
Brianna claims Zach offered her a $12 million payout to sign an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) to never speak about their relationship or breakup. As someone who has worked pretty deep in the music industry…the story seems pretty implausible, just due to the fact that it’s unlikely Bryan has that kind of money liquid, and may be pretty close to his entire net worth. And the accusations are…pretty mild.
The worst accusations Chickenfry has is that Zach “love bombed” her for the first four months of their relationship, before growing more distant, and was irritable at a bonfire the night before her birthday. If you care (trust me, it’s not worth it) you can read the badly-written-obviously-AI blog post from Barstool Sports, the company where Brianna is a well known podcaster, here.
Aren’t those things just…typical markers for a relationship that isn’t going to work?
It gets weirder, as Brianna’s podcast co-host and boss, Dave Portenoy (a notorious womanizer/nearly-50-year-old bachelor doing a podcast with a woman half his age) decided to launch a hip hop career by dropping not one, but two, Zach diss tracks. It’s not clear here whether Portenoy is Bri’s stand in boyfriend…or twisted father figure. Gross.
Cringe is…and understatement. Apart from Portenoy’s lack of any kind of vocal talent…he just can’t write a song. These lines are from the above linked “Country Diddy” (a clever title, at least).
Alcoholic needs help/he’s out of his depth
but if you tried 12 steps/you would get out of breath
uhhh…wut? Diss tracks are an American pop culture tradition…but mocking someone for being an alcoholic (I have no idea if it’s true or not) then claiming they can’t even make it through recovery…just makes Portenoy look bad. There haven’t been any other accusations of Bryan being an alcoholic, but if he is…kicking a man who’s looking for addiction help just makes you look bad.
Then, the Swifties did what they do best…make an unrelated pop culture happening to somehow bend to make Taylor the victim, claiming in the wake of the Chickenfry controversy that Zach stole songs from Taylor, according to Rolling Stone.
Over the past few days, TikTok has filled up with these plagiarism allegations — though, to our ears, they all seem pretty specious. At most, the lead fiddle melody in Bryan’s “Let You Down” sounds kinda like the lead banjo melody of Swift’s “Should’ve Said No.” (This one even got Portnoy’s suspicious approval.)
But the similarities between Bryan’s “Pink Skies” and Swift’s “Betty” seem to come down to some folksy acoustic guitar picking paired with harmonica, qualities you can find in a whole lot of other songs.
Meanwhile, another person tried to claim that Bryan’s song with John Mayer “Better Days” was a “diabolical” rip off of Swift’s scathing John Mayer break-up tune “Dear John.” But what those songs share in common is the distinct tone of Mayer’s electric guitar playing — something the musician brought himself to “Better Days” and something Swift was ostensibly trying to replicate on her own tune as part of her excoriation.
Rather than respond to any of it, Bryan simply dropped new single, and stayed off social media…as his only response.
She's bound to come back and haunt you forever
There’s ghosts in the windows and walls
I'm waitin' by the telephone all ******' night
Someone that ain't ever gonna callEveryone is tellin' me that I need help or therapy
But all I need is to be left aloneNew York this time of year ain't good for me
'Cause all my friends lack self-control and empathy
When in doubt…fewer words are almost always the way to go.
UPDATE: Bryan announced a show with Kings of Leon at MetLife Stadium in New York as “one of his only shows” in 2025. The Oklahoma-born singer shared in an Instagram post that he plans to spend the year in grad school in Paris, a decision he made after a midnight visit to his late mother’s gravesite.
Zach seems to not want to live the celebrity/rock star life…as he recently withdrew from the 2025 Grammys, likely to avoid Beyonce’s fans attacking him online if he were to best her in the “Best Country Album” category.
[two]
As…pretty much everyone is working to unpack the results of the election, one of the more unexpected caveats of Gen Z men leaning right…is how religious they’re becoming, even as Gen Z women are heading to further left, politically.
The New York Times reports:
At Grace Church in Waco, Texas, the Generation Z gender divide can be seen in the pews. It has the potential to reshape both politics and family life.
On a beautiful Sunday morning in early September, dozens of young men in Waco, Texas, started their day at Grace Church.
Men greeted visitors at the door, manned the information table and handed out bulletins. Four of the five musicians onstage were men. So was the pastor who delivered the sermon and most of the college students packing the first few rows.
“I’m so grateful for this church,” Ryan Amodei, 28, told the congregation before a second pastor, Buck Rogers, baptized him in a tank of water in the sanctuary.
Grace Church, a Southern Baptist congregation, has not made a conscious effort to attract young men. It is an unremarkable size, and is in many ways an ordinary evangelical church. Yet its leaders have noticed for several years now that young men outnumber young women in their pews. When the church opened a small outpost in the nearby town of Robinson last year, 12 of the 16 young people regularly attending were men.
“We’ve been talking about it from the beginning,” said Phil Barnes, a pastor at that congregation, Hope Church. “What’s the Lord doing? Why is he sending us all of these young men?”
The dynamics at Grace are a dramatic example of an emerging truth: For the first time in modern American history, young men are now more religious than their female peers. They attend services more often and are more likely to identify as religious.
“We’ve never seen it before,” Ryan Burge, an associate professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, said of the flip.
Among Generation Z Christians, this dynamic is playing out in a stark way: The men are staying in church, while the women are leaving at a remarkable clip. ...
It is too early to know if this new trend in churchgoing indicates a long-term realignment, said Russell Moore, the editor in chief of Christianity Today.
But he marveled at its strangeness in Christian history.
“I’m not sure what church life looks like with a decreasing presence of women,” he said, pointing out that they historically have been crucial forces in missionary work and volunteering. “We need both spiritual mothers and spiritual fathers.” ...
Pastor and Podcaster Paul Anleitner breaks this phenomenon down, by explaining that young women and other groups are not becoming less religious, but transferring that longing for meaning elsewhere.
Properly understood, religion is simply a word we can use to define the ultimate guiding story, the chief, ultimate interpretive lens and ecology of practices that sit atop the hierarchy of one's meaning making endeavors. For some, their religion might be expressed in a more traditional guiding story and community of practices, such as what you could find in Jewish or Christian communities.
But for others, their religion, with their guiding story, ecology of practices, Their community, rituals, and liturgy, they might find that in sports, or politics, or activism, or scientism, or do it yourself spirituality. These secular substitute religions function as religions insofar as they function as the chief guiding story and locus of meaning for one's life.
And that is an inescapable part of the developmental process, which begins in us in our infancy and continues onward throughout life. Put more simply, we're not born into the world with answers as to why we exist at all or what our purposes or aims in life should be beyond our evolutionary instincts to survive, to reproduce, to be fitted to our habitat, nor do we inherently possess answers to any of the full range of questions that can haunt the minds of professional philosophers or just curious children alike.
As far as we know, we are the only creatures in all of the cosmos that tell stories. When we're young, our parents or our primary caretakers, they don't give us like the answers to life's tough questions in a PowerPoint presentation or an Excel spreadsheet. No, they come to us with stories from the past.
So what “religion” are Gen-Z? Well, witchcraft is a thing on social media…
And the 4B Movement from South Korea is popping off here in the U.S., in which women swear off:
sex
dating
marriage
having kids
To signal they’re a part of this movement, women are shaving their heads (see below) and wearing blue bead bracelets to signal to one another that they voted for Harris/Walz.
Many are encouraging women to divorce their husbands and break up with their boyfriends as well.
So…sacrifice? Rituals? Imagery to signal values and identify one another in public (like a cross necklace..only a blue bracelet?)
Yup…sounds like religion to me. As to how the birth rate is going to fare when Gen-Z men are churchgoing Christians and many Gen-Z women are scalped-shaved witches…well, that doesn’t look so great right now.
[three]
…and if you needed more evidence on religion at the center of pop clture and politics, non-partisan YouTube show Breaking Points pointed out that self-proclaimed witches on TikTok are trying to cast spells to get Kamala to retake the White House via recount.
The fact that almost every witch, every astrologer, every medium, every psychic on this app is sort of coming together right now because of this presidential election is incredible. Because by now we all know that almost everyone who's intuitively connected in any way woke up between 2 and 4 a.m. morning after the election and we all knew something was up.
But at the same time, we all felt sort of free. Here's the thing, the astrology girlies have not let us down all year. So while y'all accept these results, while y'all accept what's on the screen right here, I I will not be counting my chickens before they hatch.
Didn’t see that coming. This is a mirror image of weird Evangelicals were “prophesying” in 2020 that Trump would beat Biden via recount via the “stop the steal” movement.
I suppose the most optimistic take is that the fringes of both political parties have a lot more in common than they realize, so I guess we can all get along now?!
[four]
Tragically, a string of anti-Trump individuals killing their family members extended. Last week, a mentally il man known for his fanatic anti-Trump views killed his wife, two sons and ex-girlfriend before turning the gun on himself in Duluth, MN.
This week, a Jeff Bezos employee in Seattle is behind bars for murdering her Trump-supporting father with an ice axe.
A Blue Origin employee married to a prominent trans author has been accused of killing her elderly father with an ice axe on Election Night.
Corey Burke, 33, allegedly struck, stabbed and strangled her father, 67-year-old Timothy Burke, in a fatal attack at her $800,000 Seattle home on November 5.
Burke, a training manager at Jeff Bezos' rockets and spacecraft company, confessed to killing her father after he refused to turn off the lights, according to charging documents seen by DailyMail.com.
After emerging from the house with blood 'dripping' down her face, she confessed to police that she 'freaked out,' claiming there was 'something important about Election Day.'
Burke reportedly told detectives that 'she knew that she could not convince her father to keep the lights off', so went upstairs and retrieved the murder weapon.
She then tripped her father and strangled him before attacking him with the ice axe.
Burke then bit him and hit him several times in the head and side with the blunt and sharp ends of the ice axe, cops say. His body was found in the basement.
Popular YouTuber WhatIfAltHist made the bold prediction before the election that, regardless of the outcome, the unrest would result in 1,000 civilian deaths within 12 months…based on an algorithm he built.
I thought it was absurd when I heard that two months ago. I still think it’s absurd.
But then again, he’s already 0.8% correct, and it’s only been a week.
[five]
As always, let’s head into the weekend with a Pop Culture Roundup:
OUT NOW: Gladiator II has positive-ish reviews, despite glaring historical inaccuracies, including one scene where someone is reading a newspaper in the Roman Empire (really). Robert Pattison’s The Batman sequel series The Penguin apparently played more like The Sopranos than a comic book show—now that all episodes are out, it’s got a very positive buzz. Red One, the Christmas/Action movie from Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Chris Evans (Captain America) is apparently pure garbage…but people will probably still watch it. Yellowstone returned on Sunday night, and apparently killed off Kevin Costner’s character immediately (not exactly a spoiler, as it’s been all over the internet). And speaking of, creator Taylor Sheridan’s “Yellowstone with Oil,” Landman, starring Billy Bob Thorton, Jon Hamm and Billy Bob Thorton debuts on Paramount+ this Sunday.
MOVIES: Denzel Washington will star in Black Panther III, then star in 3-4 more films before retiring. The legendary actor made his on-screen debut in a made-for-TV project in 1977. The next James Bond will be a man in his 30’s, which sadly rules out Henry Cavill (Batman vs. Superman, The Witcher), who just turned 41…the actor. Whoever is chosen doesn’t need to be white like the character in the novels, but is expected to sign on for a decade’s worth of films. The Little Mermaid has entered public domain, which means Disney can’t keep the IP from being made into a horror movie. Can’t believe I’m saying this, but The Little Mermaid (the horror movie) trailer looks pretty cool.
TV: The Last of Us and Peacemaker will both return to HBO in 2025. Peacemaker hits in August, while The Last of Us will drop sometime in the spring. Lady GaGa (A Star is Born, that terrible Joker sequel) joins the cast of Wednesday for season 2 on Netflix. Taylor Sheridan, who has created a string of hit shows including Yellowstone, 1923, Lioness and Tulsa King is teaming up with The Voice alum Blake Shelton for a new show called The Road, which will be a mix of singing competition show and docu-series about the touring life of blue-collar musicians.
COOL STUFF: John Mayer now owns the Jim Henson lot, where The Muppets was filmed. Mayer has rented office and studio space there for years, and snagged the property when it came up for grabs, alongside co-buyer McG, who directed Charlies Angels and the rom-com This Means War in the 2000’s. If you have $3 million to spend on a vehicle that isn’t street legal, you can pick up one of 10 Batmobiles from Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy—Warner Brothers is selling them off.
Woah. Apparently the studio wants this to be Tom Cruise’s Swan Song in the Mission Impossible franchise, but Cruise (now 62) doesn’t want to stop playing the character. So, this is the last one. Unless it isn’t. In theaters May 23rd.
For the first time since 2019, Marvel might just have a movie I actually want to see in the theater.
Remi Malek (Bohemian Rhapsody, Mr. Robot) as an uber-nerdy CIA coder who works around the fact that he’s a total wuss by being good at tech stuff as he goes after his wife’s killer. Lawrence Fishburne (The Matrix) and Jon Bernthall (The Walking Dead) in the mix make this one a potential first hit of the “summer season” with an April 2025 release date. Bring it…looks amazing.
[new music]
Apple Music | YouTube Music
I’m not much of a Christmas music person (I’ll enjoy a bit starting in mid-December), but hearing American R&B duo JOHNNYSWIM rework Irish folk/punk outfit The Pogues classic tune about…waking up hungover in jail warms my heart in a strange way.
One one hand, it’s easy to slot Sam Barber in alongside Zach Bryan, Tyler Childers, Wyatt Flores…a Gen-Z Jason Isbell.
But unlike the typical 21-year-old, who sings mostly about either wide-eyed wonder or bad relationships and heartbreak, Barber dives deep into the complexities of his worldview, unpacking his relationship with mother and grandfather, and writing heavily from a place of introspection…a songwriting angle most don’t find until they’ve aged up another decade.
Restless Mind probably isn’t quite the best country album of 2024…but it just might be in the running.
[podcast]
Apple Podcasts | Pocket Casts
Once again, The Free Press hits it out of the park. When every other news outlet is looking at why the Dems lost this year, the latest episode of the Honestly Podcast dives deep into how the Dems rebuilt after a 49-state-loss in the 1984 election, to put Bill Clinton in the White House in 1992. Fascinating stuff for any armchair politico.
Until the next one,
-sth