Zach Seabaugh delivered a surprise to his fans in the middle of last week.
Then his fans delivered one right back.
With absolutely no advance notice, Zach dropped a five-track, self-titled EP on Wednesday. It marked his first release since placing in the Top 6 on Season 9 of The Voice.
Fans caught on quickly. By 8:30 a.m. that morning, the EP was already number four on the iTunes country albums chart and soon cracked the Top 10 on the iTunes overall albums chart. It stayed there the rest of the day.
Zach told Voice Views he “never thought” the EP would get such a warm reception and was actually a little nervous about releasing new music so soon.
He co-wrote four of the five songs on the EP, the lone exception being the uptempo lead single “Nothing Good Happens After Midnight,” co-penned by Bruce Burch and Wally Montgomery.
Zach says they approached him with the song right after his run on The Voice ended and he came back to it a few months later, deciding it was a perfect fit for a single at the start of summer. Zach describes it as “an anthem to teenagers wanting to stay up after midnight and have some fun.”
And fun is a great way to describe another album track, “Home to Mama,” about a gal who might be a bit too hot and free-spirited to introduce to a young man’s mother. It has a definite Elvis Presley vibe and comes from a guy who used a few Elvis-like hip twists to entertain fans during his time on the show.
“I wanted an upbeat, funny song on this EP,” Zach says. “I never want to push for anything, but rather (have) it come natural to me and luckily this song did.
“I told my mom and sisters I would write a song that would have something to do with them and this is the idea that I came up with. I took it to some writers, and they loved the idea so, next thing you know, we had a fun story to tell.”
But Zach says he wanted to make sure the EP included a nice mix of songs and showed “everyone the soft side of my music,” so fans are also treated to a pair of ballads — “Saturdays” and “Sweet Wine and Power Lines.”
The latter might be Zach’s most impressive vocal on the EP; it’s also one of the most popular songs with fans, judging from iTunes.
With such a positive reaction to the EP, Zach says he hopes to do a music video for one of the songs and is already writing music for a full-length album.
Now 17, he’s also hoping to collaborate on a song with Emily Ann Roberts, his Team Blake Shelton colleague and fellow teen sensation from Season 9. She finished second on the show.
The two country singers have already performed two shows together. They have another scheduled for June 15 at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre in Atlanta, Ga.; Zach is from Marietta, Ga.
As for The Voice, Zach said he’ll be forever grateful to the show for helping him create a fan base that includes nearly 33,000 fans on Facebook and more than 63,000 followers on Twitter.
“It’s not normal to be singing in front of 20 million faces every week,” Zach says, “and I am so thankful for that opportunity because it has opened so many doors and has introduced me to so many new faces.”
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