Country music has been in a very good period, artistically and commercially and 2024 was a kind of culmination. So not-unhip did the genre suddenly appear that it attracted Beyoncè, like a bey to a flower. However, that Cowboy Carter thing wasn’t really country music. More of a beeping mass of nonsense. I don't think anyone denies she looks good in a hat, though. Post Malone's version of the same triple album was excellent, but I'm still rewarding genre commitment, and I want to see more from Malone. Plus he was in too many gambling ads this year. I grow concerned, but (more to the point) bored. Also I'm hoping the era of 27-cut album is winding down. I didn't lovelove the Jelly Roll album (though I loveloved the last one), or also Shaboozey, and I'm concerned that more pop crossover is liable to bloom in '25. I like my country 99 44/100 percent pure, though like some of the artists below, but not others, I'm willing to countenance a bit of adulteration now and then.
(1) Corb Lund, El Viejo: Quickly recorded in Lund's living room with his band the Hurtin' Albertans, this has all kinds of momentum. The production’s a critique of Beyoncè, emphasizing that country music consists largely of humans playing actual musical instruments. A great set of songs, alternately amusing (Redeck Rehab) and moving (as on the title cut, dedicated to Lund's mentor, the late Ian Tyson). Anyway, it sounds great and real, and though Lund's voice may not be the most powerful instrument in the world, it's among the most expressive. El Viejo features one of the most unusual and beautiful songs of the year, Insha'Allah ("if God wills it"), written in the persona of a man fighting with Lawrence of Arabia (1888-1935) in the Middle East. It might be the only expression of Muslim devotion in the history of country music, but it shows great artistic ambition and it resonates with experiences of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last decades.
(2) Dwight Yoakam, Brighter Days: Dwight, one of the great singers and writers in country history, was among the veteran country artists who put out excellent albums this year (Jamey Johnson got arrested the same day his came out, for example; Swamp Dogg put out a great album called Blackgrass; Sawyer Brown re-appeared). But Dwight’s greater than most, and this album is an astonishing return to form for a man who's emphasized the acting over the last couple of decades. The team of Yoakam and his producer Pete Anderson issued a number of the greatest country albums of the 1990s, and in the history of the genre: classics such as Buenos Noches from a Lonely Room, This Time, and A Long Way Home. After the pair disintegrated, Dwight seemed lost as a recording artist, and some of the focus and perfection characteristic of those records went missing. Yoakam self-produced this one, which returns him to his classic sound. There are no weak songs on this worthy addition to a great oeuvre. A Dream That Never Ends.
(3) Sunny Sweeney, Still Provoked: The delightful Sunny does what Taylor Swift and others have done lately: she records the whole of one of her past albums again. Sometimes this seems gratuitous or lazy. But here it’s beautifully justified. First, Sunny's 2014 Provoked was a great suite of songs that too few people heard (it peaked at #20 on the country chart). The songs are written with Nashville's best (Natalie Hemby, Brandy Clark, Angaleena Presley, and Ashley Monroe, among others) and a number were and are potential classics. This re-recording is basically acoustic, the dominant voices a pair of guitars. It sounds great, better than the original, and even though I keep track of Sweeney, forgotten songs like Used Cars, written with Hemby.
(4) Zach Top, Cold Beer and Country Music: Speaking of 1990s country, many are in the excellent business of reviving that beautiful shit, and no one's doing it better than Zach Top, unknown when the year began, well-known now. Like George Jones, like Vern Gosdin, like Chris Stapleton, Top started out in bluegrass, and Jones and Gosdin are definite sources of his hyper-expressive singing. This cool drink of water looks like a '90s country star and sounds like a '90s country star (oh, maybe Tracy Byrd or Ken Mellons), but I have the feeling he'll be a dominant artist of the 2030s. This is a consistently excellent album with no weak cuts among its 12. It's similar to and better than the album this year by Midland, who have a comparable sound. I Never Lie.
(5) Ellis Bullard, Honky Tonk Ain't Noise Pollution: This is a way-down-deep young country singer and guitar killer from Austin who’s doing something like what Top, but more eccentrically. I like everything about this album (except maybe its title, which is awkward). His vocal range is similar to that of the beloved Josh Turner, who also put out a good album this year, but this one's better and quirkier. Lots of people in the neo-neo-traditionalist movement favor Waylon Jennings, with that big bass thump and lowdown vocals (that's Jamey Johnson's schtick in a nutshell), but no one but Waylon has done Waylon better than Bullard does on songs like "Prison in My Mind" and Hopeless Waltz (Gina Walker).
(6) Hannah Juanita, Tennessee Songbird: Bluesy, loose second album from a prodigal daughter who escaped the south only to return and start singing hardline country music. Speaking of Vern Gosdin and the aesthetics of return, she does a lovely version of Mother Country Music. And there's this:
Granny always said the rain won't keep it clean
You gotta really scrub it if you want it to glitter and gleam
She put on her bikini and made a pink martini
You ain't never seen nothin' like the sheen on Granny's Cutlass Supreme
So says Hannah Juanita, the Tennessee songbird!
(7) Franklin County Trucking Company, The Death-Defying Adventures of the Franklin County Trucking Company: Sometimes you just need to drive and rock the fuck out. What a great band. It might sound like a throwback to classic southern rock or hard-ass boogie blues (Ain't No Duke in Paducah) not to mention to the 1970s golden era of the trucking song. But if you've been out on 81 lately, you’ll agree with me that right now, not 1974, is the golden era of the trucking industry. So it ought to be the golden era for the trucking song, the trucking act, and the Franklin County Trucking Company. And it is! Raise Hell, Praise Dale.
(8) Lainey Wilson, Whirlwind: You may have noticed that I'm consciously avoiding megastars. But it's hard to avoid Lainey, who might be the top country star today. She has picked up the rowdy, traditionalist mantle of Miranda Lambert, whose Postcards from Texas is also a very solid, though maybe not classic, album, and who features on one cut here. Lainey's traditionalist mannerisms ("Keeping Up with Jones") are convincing, and she'll never not be performing "Heart Like a Truck." Is she still on Yellowstone? In the middle of the traditionalist songs, Lainey throws in a lot of pop or retro touches. An interesting example of this is Ring Finger, which gives a traditional country lyric over a collocation of synth-pop and 1980s-funk grooves. But by and large it's an extremely listable and basically traditional album.
(9) Lisa Bastoni, On the Water: A good opposite for Lainey: gentle, pointed, good-humored songs of quiet craft, not exactly rowdy Lainey's thing. Maybe this is more folk or singer/songwriter than country. Anyway, it's country enough, and it features elucidations of contemporary reality like Let's Look at Houses (that we know we can't afford). That video has 41 views, and these wonderful songs, simply and beautifully performed, deserve so much more play. Gentle and forgiving accounts of what it's like to try to get through our days now. Waxwing.
(10) Uncle Kracker, Coffee and Beer: I definitely thought about Post Malone at this spot, and a bunch of others too. But I think Uncle Kracker, originally Kid Rock's turntablist, has been surprisingly excellent and shockingly influential, all this time. Specifically, it seemed circa 2012-16 that half the songs on the chart emulated Kracker's Follow Me, a song of great simplicity and even beauty from 2000. You might think that shit is silly, but it's lovely. In a way, Kracker's brand of redneck hip-hop has become the sound of now, a quarter century later, with Shaboozey and Lil Nas X. This is a really fine, steady, unpretentious, well-written pop country album. "I ain't a cowboy, but I'm High on My Horse."
Some excellent bluegrass albums:
—Darin and Brooke Aldridge, Talk of the Town
—The Little Roy and Lizzie Show, All for the Love of Sunshine
—The Del McCoury Band, Songs of Love and Life
—Brit Taylor, Kentucky Bluegrassed
—Sister Sadie, No Fear
—Follow Crispin Sartwell on X: @CrispinSartwell