Ron Brunk’s “These Days” Sounds Like a Warning Siren Disguised as a Rock Ballad

Ron Brunk isn’t chasing relevance. He’s documenting survival. After 38 albums, the man isn’t trying to prove he can write songs. He’s proving he still has something urgent to say, and “These Days” lands like a journal entry cracked open in public.

The track opens with a familiar softness, the kind of guitar tone that feels lifted from a dusty late-80s record, but there’s nothing retro about the tension underneath it. The production is clean without being sterile. Every instrument leaves space for Brunk’s voice, which carries the song like a tired but determined narrator walking through wreckage. He doesn’t oversing. He doesn’t beg for attention. He sounds like someone who’s seen enough to stop dramatizing and start telling the truth plainly.

Lyrically, “These Days” is soaked in disbelief. Not the theatrical kind. The everyday kind. The kind you feel scrolling headlines at 2 a.m. Brunk sketches a world where hate leaks into the air supply and people adapt to it like it’s weather. His delivery is half-whisper, half-plea, which makes the chorus hit harder. When he pushes his voice, it feels less like a performance and more like a crack in the armor.

The video doubles down on that unease. Ballerinas glide across the screen with technical grace, but the mood is haunted. Beauty exists, but it’s floating over something broken. That contrast is the entire thesis of the song. Life keeps moving. Art keeps spinning. The ground underneath it isn’t stable.

What makes “These Days” stick is that Brunk refuses easy optimism. He’s not selling hope as a product. He’s admitting fear and choosing to sing anyway. In a culture addicted to distraction, that honesty feels rebellious. This track is for listeners who feel the static in the background of modern life and want music that acknowledges it instead of numbing it. Replay value isn’t about catchiness here. It’s about recognition. You come back because it sounds like the thoughts you’ve been trying not to finish.