Luke Bryan battles through illness to entertain crowd at Nashville's Bridgestone Arena

Suffering from what he described as "a head cold" for the past two weeks, Luke Bryan was in no condition to sing 25 songs in two hours at Bridgestone Arena on Saturday evening.

However, the art of entertainment is tangentially related to the ability to consistently sing well.

Bryan, who has been honored as mainstream country music's Entertainer of the Year five times in the past decade, marshaled -- between coughing fits -- what he referred to in a recent Tennessean feature as "special magic" to finish his sixth sold-out Bridgestone Arena show in the same, previously-mentioned decade.

Between not wanting to let down the ticket-paying capacity crowd in attendance and offering a lesson in the art of gutting through seemingly impossible odds to his openers Ashley Cooke, Chayce Beckham and Jackson Dean, Bryan impressively persevered.

Did Luke Bryan cancel his concert? What we know about his illness and fate of his tour

Was hearing Bryan perform his traditional muscled-up versions of songs like "Country Girl (Shake It For Me)" alongside acoustic guitar, piano and stripped-down crowd singalongs in the cards at the start of the evening? No. Is Bryan currently a consummate showman who spends his days at concerts, hosting television programs, or posting on social media, largely hamming it up in a frank manner? Certainly.

Having the wisdom to know how and when to conserve his skill and double down on his craft to do the heavy lifting on a night off perhaps shows Bryan to be learned beyond his stereotypically lowest common denominator-aiming expectations.

Here are three other takeaways from a mixed bag of entertainment at Bridgestone Arena.

Nashville's still important, even when you're "dying" onstage

Luke Bryan canceled a week of appearances to rest himself to appear in front of a live crowd in the pinnacle market of the music he makes.

It still wasn't enough.

"This is such a frustrating weekend. I am not back singing -- can hardly even talk still," posted the 30-time country chart-topper on social media on Aug. 7.

Bryan recently canceled concert dates in Salt Lake City, Utah, and Boise, Idaho, plus allowed Lainey Wilson to replace him as the headliner at George, Washington's Watershed Festival.

Back-to-back gigs in Rogers, Arkansas and Music City on Aug. 10 and 12 proved to be a step too far, too soon.

"I'm gonna sound good on some songs, like s*** on some others," noted Bryan three songs into his live set.

Thirty minutes after proclaiming that he knew he was not in top vocal form, Bryan, while turning his trademark black baseball cap backward on his sweat-drenched hair, stated, "I'm dying up here," before going acoustic for a take on Billy Currington's 2006 hit "Good Directions" -- one of his favorite offerings as a songwriter.

It wasn't enough.

Before calling openers Beckham and Dean back to the stage to perform his CMA Song of the Year-winning, Jordan Davis duet "Buy Dirt, "Bryan added that he'd tried tequila, vodka and water during the evening but that his voice had not yet returned.

"Hell, we're just going to turn this into a honky-tonk party," stated Bryan before launching into 2013's "Crash My Party."

"Oh hell, I'm in the wrong key, fellas," he told his band as they were set up in an impromptu "acoustic in the round" format at the front of the stage.

"My band has no idea what we're doing; they're holding on for dear life," Bryan joked.

Debates on the authentic, organic musicality of Luke Bryan's country music catalog are a persistent part of the genre's not-so-pop-friendly fans' laments about Bryan's consistent success.

The silver lining of the "That's My Kind of Night" singer performing while sick is that he highlighted the purity of the art in his voluminous musical catalog.

Jackson Dean, already a workmanlike artist, is building a star-making musical catalog

Providing direct support for Bryan at Bridgestone Arena was Odenton, Maryland native and Big Machine Records-signed artist Jackson Dean.

As they did during a January headlining set at Nashville's Basement East, country music fans under 25, unaware of the genre's vast nuances, compare Dean to 2023's Academy of Country Music Entertainer of the Year Chris Stapleton.

Dean's also under 25 -- however, he's also a quiet-spoken, free-spirited intellectual wise beyond his years.

He'd probably find himself comfortable as a cross between bluegrass icon Dan Tyminski ("Man of Constant Sorrow") and Luke Dick, his current Nashville songwriting sensei of sorts -- Dick's notable recent songwriting smashes include Miranda Lambert's Country Music Association award-winner "Bluebird" and Kacey Musgraves' critically-acclaimed track "Velvet Elvis."

Dean's most significant achievement of the night?

He wore a shirt onstage that his mother, seated in the crowd and watching the show, purchased for him to wear.

The juxtaposition of the rugged fan of leather-crafting who wood burns intricate designs into his guitars and passionately loves his family adds another layer to his inviting personality.

Of course, back to the Stapleton comparison, before his 2015 star-making turn "Traveller," the "Cold" vocalist's song "Drink A Beer" was a chart-topping hit for the man of the hour on Saturday night at Bridgestone Arena, Luke Bryan.

The truth of where the heights of acclaim for Dean's career eventually land exists between fans potentially lying to themselves and an artist in humble service to his talent.

Regardless hear Dean and his band rip into his outlaw-rock-styled 2022 Billboard Country Airplay chart-topping single "Don't Come Lookin'" and it's still readily apparent that he's a significant star on the rise.

Ronnie Milsap and Lionel Richie moments offer unique insight during Bryan's set

During Bryan's extended acoustic set, the literal Vegas showman that the country icon has become via his Resorts World live show took center stage.

He does a mini piano set at Resorts World, featuring hits like 2015's "Strip It Down."

However, Bryan's also a co-host of American Idol with Lionel Richie.

During Richie's initial solo run, his country adjacency via befriending and collaborating with country superstar Kenny Rogers -- especially on songs they either co-wrote or both recorded like Richie's Diana Ross duet "Endless Love" -- was incredibly important in redefining his stardom.

For Bryan sitting at the piano in front of nearly 20,000 people with nary a clue of what to play and with all manner of liquors flowing through his veins, he naturally didn't veer toward Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's "Fishin' In The Dark" or any other traditional country favorites in his wheelhouse. No, he told all of the women in the crowd to "grab their sweaty man" and croon Diana Ross' parts to Richie's 1981 classic.

It was a clear homage to how much he likely appreciates the honor of the quiet moments where the secrets to superstar longevity that supersedes genres and stereotypes are passed to him from the Motown pioneer.

Even deeper, doubling down on countrified soul by playing another 1981 hit -- Ronnie Milsap's "(There's) No Gettin' Over Me" -- was a curious one. Bryan's country stardom has arguably attracted fewer dyed-in-the-wool genre devotees to his success than star-excited country neophytes to the space.

Bryan, thus, often gets painted as more the latter, though clearly, when sweating through his jeans and straining through illness to reach a soulful falsetto while seated at a piano, he is the former.

"You mean to tell me there aren't any Ronnie Milsap fans in the house in Nashville?"

When Milsap released "(There's) No Gettin' Over Me," Luke Bryan was five years old.

"(There's) No Gettin' Over Me" is a decade younger than the combined ages of Bryan's openers Ashley Cooke and Chayce Beckham.

Yes, Luke, in a fanbase erring both younger and less wholly country aware than most, there may no longer be any Ronnie Milsap fans in the house in Nashville -- but that's another story for another day.

Undaunted, Bryan -- as he did for two fascinating hours -- soldiered on with an entertainer's passion for the fans, lights, songs and stage guiding his path.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Luke Bryan battles through illness to entertain crowd at Nashville's Bridgestone Arena