This year's best country albums list is once again presented in partnership with Don't Rock The Inbox, the amazing country music newsletter run by Stereogum contributors Marissa R. Moss and Natalie Weiner. Check it out and consider buying a subscription.
2025 — a year where once again, country music, its aesthetic and its politics remained far too relevant. But year after year we're compelled to reiterate: There's so much more to this story than Morgan Wallen, in spite of his perennial ubiquity. Yes, much of Nashville is wrapped up in trying to replicate Wallen's country pop-via-clumsy R&B crossover formula (or somehow worse, Jelly Roll's Three Doors Down/Nickelback pastiche) — but as ever there is a counter, in this case the neotrad resurgence headlined by Zach Top and to a degree Ella Langley, who is working hard to keep a Lambert-esque spirit at the core of her pursuit of country chart-toppers.
Not to mention the veritable flood of non-Music Row country, Americana and folk, which has become nearly as trendy — Tyler Childers plays arenas, people! Rising tides being what they are, there were a glut of wonderful albums this year by artists who never get so much as a sideways glance from radio PDs. With our list (and on our newsletter Don’t Rock the Inbox) we tried to spotlight a blend of all these different kinds of acts, with an eye towards artists we haven't featured on previous years' lists — there is truly so much to choose from, we could have easily made this a list of 20, 30 or 40 records long. But in the interest of approachability, here's a short survey of 2025's cream of the country crop.
NATALIE'S PICKS
Muscadine Bloodline - …And What Was Left Behind (Stancaster/Thirty Tigers)
- [Spotify]
- [Apple Music]
- [Amazon]
At Don't Rock The Inbox, we have a phrase we come back to: country radio in a better world. Muscadine Bloodline are one of many acts that fit that description almost perfectly — after hustling for years, dabbling in attempts to play the Music Row game, the Alabama duo took their stellar harmonies and Southern rock-inflected hooks to indie Thirty Tigers to great (and prolific) effect. This collection sounds traditional without being dull or redundant, showcasing both their good-timing side ("Hittin' My Stride") and knack for a particularly Millennial melancholy on "Way Too High (2010)" — a song that helps you realize "Lil Wayne on a burnt CD" might be the single most universal experience of being young in that moment.
This album makes sounding good sound easy, in a very backroads/back porch kind of way that never gets cloying or forced. Majcen's velvety but conversational baritone floats over humid, laconic acoustic grooves befitting his Florida origins; the songs cover familiar territory without over-reliance on country cliché. Majcen's made a release that's easy to put on for a front to back spin in just about any context, but is still distinct from the hordes of likeminded guys with guitars. Plus: "Sleeping In A Car Is Fun Until You Gotta Pee," indeed.
Hard to beat the title on this one, but the songs live up to it and then some. Inspired by gas leak-induced hallucinations(!), War's self-described "folk-punk" music is earthy and timely at once, full of tenderness fit for the end of the world. Though she insists some of the album was written in a daze, there's an uncomfortable lucidity to many of her lyrics that's rendered breezy by the casual, Americana-with-plenty-of-twists production courtesy of Andrija Tokic (Alabama Shakes, Hurray For The Riff Raff). Rarely have "Bad Times" sounded so resilient and even jaunty. (Read more about Sunny War at Big Ears here.)
The thing that is supposed to separate country music from everything else is the strength of the songs, and these songs — raw and real, nearly unadorned save spare indie rock and country flourishes — are so arresting that I was in tears when I heard them for the first time earlier this year. There is a thread of relatable desperation running through this record, but also a deep generosity: So many country songs are versions of each other, but "Rescue You" is completely new and so, so good for it. "All the ones who have been disgraced, I'm gonna get you get you get you get you out of this place" is a mantra for 2026.
June is one of the most consistent and idiosyncratic artists working right now, with a rootsy take on genre agnosticism that centers on her instantly recognizable style of high lonesome-via-Memphis singing. Her latest album is a characteristic showcase of her versatility, warmth, and lyrical optimism, imagining "a world where we can all be free" ("Endless Tree") and "a guiding light" (the hymn-like "Calling My Spirit"). In the long tradition of soul-folk, June makes another immutable entry, ranging from the twang of "My Life Is A Country Song" to "Superpower," in which June juxtaposes her rich Southern drawn with a laid-back dub groove as she implores listeners to ponder, "What words to write on this blank page lying beneath you?" The right attitude as we head into another year of gifts and (numerous) challenges…
Honorable Mention: It's All Her Fault - A Tribute To Cindy Walker
If your country interests skew in the decades-old direction, you could hardly do better than this compilation — a tribute to one of the most important songwriters in early country, Cindy Walker, with her songs performed by an array of the best women artists working in country and Americana right now. It's all honkin' and tonkin' on this release, a perfect showcase of both Walker's impact in Western swing and beyond, and just how many revivalists and beyond have been influenced by her work (Summer Dean doing "Don't Talk To Me About Men" is a particular favorite).
MARISSA'S PICKS
"I know I'm the coyote," sings Ken Pomeroy on the John Moreland duet "Coyote." "I bite just 'cause I'm scared." As with all of the songs on her second album, Cruel Joke, the Oklahoma-based Pomeroy is uncannily adept at synthesizing pain, generational trauma and heartbreak in simple, gorgeously succinct lines accompanied by equally tasteful but interesting arrangements. Pomeroy understands, though, that "sad" itself isn’t a genre: Her unexpected vocal choices and knack for softening the somber with a great melody make songs like "Wrango" and "Cicadas" truly unforgettable.
It takes some kind of mastery to make an eight-song project feel like a complete country-rock opera, but that's what Eric Church manages on Evangeline vs. The Machine, an album about the value of music in the internet age and Church’s own fight to keep his integrity true and his fans served in… well, the age of late-stage capitalism and a splintered political landscape. Recording over the span of four days with a band of 20-plus musicians, Church brings in strings and woodwinds to make it all feel far more Pink Floyd than countrypolitan. Tackling the pain of dropping your kids off at school after another mass shooting ("Johnny") and the lifetime pursuit of art over everything else ("Evangeline"), Church brings the listener along on a thrilling journey that leaves us feeling unsettled but motivated instead of washed in toxic positivity – he ends in a cover of the dystopian Tom Waits tune "Clap Hands," after all.
Who knew a debut record could sit amongst the most realized, wittiest, and most thoughtful of the year? On Cherry Valley, Carter Faith is able to create a world within her music: Call it "Cherry Valley" if you will. Inspired by a real town in Tennessee, it's really the interior life of a young woman who is growing up, feeling broken, making mistakes, getting lost in music and men and pawing her way out. She's funny and self-aware ("Bar Star," an excellent, country-radio-in-a-better world kind of bop), tender and a heartbreaking ("So I Sing"), and capable of a killer ballad ("If I Had Never Lost My Mind…" which turns a classic sort of phrasing into a song also about mental health and culpability). There's also an ode to the finer things in life – "Sex, Drugs, And Country Music." If country radio weren’t such a misogynistic slog, Faith would be everywhere.
Hard Headed Woman was billed by many as Price's return to country music after some forays into a more psychedelic-rock influenced sound – but how can you return to something you helped create? Price was making her own modern spin on classic country far before it became trendy for the bros of Music Row to bring steel guitar back to the radio, and her mastery of the craft – and her lyrical fire – shows stronger than ever here. From the fuck-it-keep-fighting anthem "Don't Let The Bastards Get You Down" to the heartbroken duet of a couple longing for a spark ("Love Me Like You Used To Do," featuring Tyler Childers), Price making music in the real outlaw spirit while everyone else just cosplays.
No album this year – country or otherwise, honestly – made me think, made me laugh, made me reflect on spirituality and faith, made me challenge my notions of where you can go within a genre and beyond like Snipe Hunter. It's a trip across Childers' career and a synthesis of all the sonic elements he's toyed with on previous albums, merging his signature potent lyricism with a musical palate inspired by everything from the Hold Steady to his home in the holler and his studies of Hinduism. Just listen to the brilliant "Poachers," where Childers manages to use a song about hunting as a metaphor for his own standing in the country music universe, as an artist unafraid to bring his moral clarity to his art: "If he hadn't went broke, God cancel him sideways. We lost us another to the others, I guess." Life is all about figuring out what you're looking for — Snipe Hunter is the soundtrack to doing that fearlessly.
