On Saturday, September 6, I joined about 80,000 people inside Notre Dame Stadium for what might be the biggest choir I’ve ever been a part of. For two hours, we sang together—led by Zach Bryan and his band.

And what a band it was! A full horn section, a string quartet (plus a fiddler), steel guitar, banjo, bass, drums, and, of course, plenty of guitars filled out a massive sound. They didn’t just walk onstage—they marched in, playing pieces of the Notre Dame fight song, immediately drawing the crowd in. From the first note, Zach and his crew had us in the palm of their hands.

Bryan’s voice is something to behold—outlaw-country grit one moment, an aching baritone the next, then exploding into an intense growl that feels ripped straight from the soul. He worked the entire stage, making sure every side of the stadium felt included. And it wasn’t just loud anthems. There were quiet, vulnerable moments—like an extended a cappella section of Burn, Burn, Burn that united 80,000 voices—and there were joy-filled celebrations, like the 20-minute encore of Revival, where every band member took a solo while the crowd danced, shouted, and sang at the top of their lungs.

Now, yes—the crowd was singing about “rot gut whiskey” and being baptized with a bottle of Beam. But there was something holy happening in that stadium. Maybe it was Touchdown Jesus gazing over the crowd. Maybe it was the golden dome with Mary lifted high above campus. Maybe it was the steeple of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart piercing the skyline. Or maybe it was simply the communal power of 80,000 strangers, voices joined together. Whatever it was, there were sacred moments in that space.

Zach Bryan is not a Christian artist, but his music carries spiritual undercurrents. His songs wrestle with forgiveness, loss, loneliness, hope, and even prayer. He doesn’t paint life into something neat and tidy. He names the pain, the anger, and the doubt, and he does it with a raw honesty that feels refreshing in a world of clichés. In many ways, Christians could learn from that kind of honesty—naming reality without pretending everything’s fine.

Bryan also seems to live with a posture of wonder, seeing God in everything—trees, spring nights, friendships, grief, even the imperfections of life. That posture invites us into something deeper.

I wouldn’t call what happened Saturday night “worship” in the traditional sense. But it was sacred. It was real. It was thousands of people longing, lamenting, laughing, and singing together. And maybe—just maybe—those 80,000 voices will carry something of that night with them: the courage to be honest, the openness to see God in everything, and the reminder that there is something holy in gathering together and singing our lives out loud.

Some lyrics that stayed with me:

“Anger grows in my bones if you could not tell / But I’ll find comfort in company / Lord, forgive us, my boys and me / We’re havin’ an all-night revival / Someone call the women and someone steal the Bible / For the sake of my survival / Baptize me in a bottle of Beam, put Johnny on the vinyl (from the song Revival)

“I’d like to get lost on some old back road / Find a shade tree and a honey hole / And talk to my grandpa again / And I see God in everything / The trees and pain and nights in the spring/ So why do I still long for a home?…So let me go down the line / I wanna feel it all / Joy, pain, and sky / So let me go down the line / We all burn, burn, burn and then die (from the song Burn, Burn, Burn)

“To you, I’m just a man, to me, you’re all I am / Where the hell am I supposed to go / I poisoned myself again, somethin’ in the orange / Tells me you’re never comin’ home / If you leave today, I’ll just stare at the way / The orange touches all things around / The grass, trees, and dew, how I just hate you / Please turn those headlights around” (from Something in the Orange)

“The kids are in town for a funeral / And the grass all smells the same as the day you broke your arm swingin’ / On that kid out on the river / You bailed him out, never said a thing about Jesus or the way he’s livin’ / If you could see ’em now, you’d be proud / But you’d think they’s yuppies / Your funeral was beautiful / I bet God heard you comin’” (from Pink Skies)

“Only God and my mama know what I need / And I feel the hardwood floors on my knees / As I beg You, just to take it easy on me / Well, I wanna die an old man / Messed-up stories of me and all my old friends / And laugh about how we all thought it won’t end / How we all wind up where we begin / Movin’ at God speed / Where only God and our mamas know what we need / And we feel the hardwood floors on our knees / As we beg the world to bring us to our feet” (from Godspeed)