Zach Bryan apologizes for 'drunkenly' comparing Taylor Swift and Kanye West

After drawing Swiftie ire, Zach Bryan knows the dangers of drinking and posting all too well.

The country music star, 28, released a lengthy apology on Thursday after receiving backlash for a post on X where he stated that Ye, formerly Kanye West, is better than Taylor Swift. In the short X post on Tuesday, he also said the Philadelphia Eagles are superior to the Kansas City Chiefs, the team on which Swift's boyfriend Travis Kelce plays.

"eagles > chiefs," Bryan wrote in his original X post, according to screenshots shared by Variety and Rolling Stone. "Kanye > Taylor. who's with me."

The "Something in the Orange" singer has since deactivated his X account. But on Thursday, he took to his Instagram story to apologize for the message.

"For the record guys I wasn't coming for Taylor the other night," he wrote. "I was drunkenly comparing two records and it came out wrong. I know there's a lot of stuff that clouds around Ye and I was speaking purely musically."

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He continued, "I love Taylor's music and pray you guys know I'm human and tweet stupid things often. Hope one day I can explain this to her. Twitter gets me in trouble too much and I'd say it's best I stay off it. I'm sorry to any Taylor fans I pissed off or let down."

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Swift has infamously had a long-running feud with Ye and his ex-wife, Kim Kardashian, going back to when the "Stronger" rapper interrupted Swift's speech at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards to declare that Beyoncé should have won best female video. In 2016, a dispute over whether Swift approved a controversial lyric about her in Ye's song "Famous" led to the pop star's "Reputation" era. It also appeared to inspire two songs on her latest album, "The Tortured Poets Department."

In 2022, Ye drew widespread backlash after making a series of antisemitic statements, including telling controversial talk show host Alex Jones, "I like Hitler." The rapper said he sees "good things" about the Nazi leader who led the extermination of six million Jews in the Holocaust. Ye apologized last year to "the Jewish community for any unintended outburst caused by my words or actions."

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In his Instagram apology, Bryan told fans he has been "going through a hard time" recently and was "projecting a little" with his post about Swift, which "came off as rude and desensitized" to her.

"I respect her so much as a musician that the last thing I want is people thinking I don't appreciate and love what she has done for music," he wrote. "Okay, that's the last of it!"

But after warning fans not to "drink and tweet," Bryan followed up with another slide showing that he was listening to Swift's song "Castles Crumbling" on Spotify.

"Not saving face here, but Taylor has been a force of nature for as long as we've all been growing up and I admire that," he said. "I'm gonna go listen to this record now. I never want people to think I have a hint of malice or meanness towards anyone, ever, that's why I'm saying all this."

In one final message, Bryan concluded that "this year has been an awful lot on me in personal ways," and he vowed to take "a breather from tweeting stupid stuff, finish my tour, and ground myself somehow in the midst of all this."

Last year, Bryan was arrested in Oklahoma on a charge of obstructing an investigation. In a video shared on social media, he said he got "too lippy" with a police officer after his security guard was pulled over. The singer admitted he "was an idiot" and acted like an "actual child" during the encounter.

"I'll take the fall for it," he said. "I'm a grown man, and I shouldn't have behaved like that."

Contributing: Bryan West