Best Country and Americana Albums of 2025

One thing about Ringo is that he will never fail to look great in a cowboy hat, like all his fellow Beatles. But another thing about Ringo is that he has his own way of singing a country tune, especially with T. Bone Burnett by his side. The delightfully charming Look Up is his first full-on country album since Beaucoups of Blues back in 1970, duetting with stars like Molly Tuttle, Alison Krauss, and Billy Strings. “Time On My Hands” is a wonderfully creaky ballad of lost love where Ringo plays up his stoic underdog sense of fate, the way he once did on “Photograph” or “It Don’t Come Easy.” —Rob Sheffield

Only Noah Cyrus could make an album with appearances from Blake Shelton, Fleet Foxes, and Bill Callahan and have it all feel logical, thanks to the sonic palate she creates on I Want My Loved Ones to Go With Me, where country, folk, and ethereal pop live side by side. From the simple but sweeping call of “I Saw the Mountains” to the Laurel Canyon chug of “Way of the World,” a wise duet with Ella Langley, this is as much an album about figuring out herself as it is figuring out her family, faults and all. “As you’re growing up, you get faced with the truth,” she sings, “that your parents are people, and messed up like you.” —Marissa R. Moss

When Luke Bell died in 2022, he left behind a vast body of work: traditional but idiosyncratic country songs built out of humor, empathy, and a kind but struggling heart. The King Is Back, compiled by Bell’s family, comprises 28 of those songs with proceeds benefiting the Luke Bell Memorial Affordable Counseling Program. Bell’s writing carried an innate complexity — “Orangutang,” is about a wayward monkey who finds himself lost in Tennessee — but if you listen more carefully, it’s clear Bell was really singing about himself. Impeccably constructed and often as funny as they are illuminating, there’s a deep knowing to songs like “Black Crows” and “Roofer’s Blues” that show an artist using his music as a conduit to more deeply understand himself, and maybe be better understood by others, too. —M.M.

With Songbird, Shooter Jennings gifted country music listeners with something remarkable — a collection of studio recordings once cut by his late father, the fabled Waylon Jennings. Songbird explores previously unreleased songs from Waylon and his band tracked between 1974 and 1983, arguably the finest era of creativity in his lifetime. To ready the album, Shooter enlisted his dad’s old bandmates and a handful of friends to add light touches to the songs. As a result, Songbird plays like a top-tier crop of posthumous music, curated by those who care most about the singer’s legacy. The best part? It’s just the start of what Shooter says he’s discovered in his dad’s archives. —Matthew Leimkuehler

The band formerly known as Mandolin Orange have spent the past few years transitioning their sound into a new era (less bluegrass, more textured indie-folk). For those still skeptical, meet Rituals, a cohesive collection of deep meditations and musical musings that amount to some of the duo’s best work to date. The group reaches for new emotional and sonic heights on the midnight reflections of “Beyond Meaning” and the two-part “Endless Highway” opus, while throwing a bone to their longtime fans with the old-fashioned bluegrass-tinged ballad “Patterns.” The result is one of the year’s strongest roots-based records, no matter the band name. —Jonathan Bernstein

This year, influential Red Dirt country band Turnpike Troubadours debuted The Price of Admission, the second album since returning from a hiatus that left an Oklahoma-sized hole in the hearts of listeners hungry for more from frontman and songwriter Evan Felker. The album continues Turnpike’s tradition of cutting songs that capture life’s tough-to-handle moments in tunes drenched with fiddle and steel guitar. Released with minimal advanced promotion, the album speaks for itself — from reflective opening track “On the Red River,” a co-write with Old Crow Medicine Show’s Ketch Secor, to the boot-shufflin’ riffs of “Ruby Ann,” and a subtly uplifting message on must-hear single “Heaven Passing Through.” —M.L.

Following her 2018 breakthrough, By the Way, I Forgive You, Brandi Carlile embraced many roles — from Brandi the Steward, ushering in the resurgences of icons like Elton John, Tanya Tucker, and Joni Mitchell, to Brandi the Author, with her 2021 bestselling memoir. None of these roles left much space for Brandi the Person. That’s the thesis of Returning to Myself, a frequently moving statement that represents Carlile’s finest work since By the Way. It’s more than a return to form, pointing toward new textures in Carlile’s voice and always feeling uniquely of a piece. —J.B.

On his second full-length, Ain’t in It for My Health, Zach Top made the case that he can hold his own with greats named Alan and George. Album opener “Guitar” was classic Nineties country with a honky-tonk edge, while “Honky Tonk Til It Hurts” served as his unapologetic mission statement of committing to a drinkin’, rip-roarin’ time, the next morning be damned. In the LP’s wildly catchy first single, “Good Times & Tan Lines,” he also proved all those Alan Jackson comparisons true: The song had “Chattahoochee” vibes for days. The traditional country revival is in full swing, and the Washington state native is proudly to blame. —Daniel Kohn

For American Romance, Lukas Nelson wrote a collection of stories about the country he knows — the quiet towns found at the end of long highways, the hard lessons that come during moments of tested faith, and the people searching restlessly for someone to share a life with. Produced by Shooter Jennings, the album takes listeners down a blacktop road of robust heartland rock with “Born Runnin’ Out of Time,” examines the weight of mortality on roots number “Pretty Much,” and digs through folk-tinged ruminations on the album’s standout title track. Coming roughly 15 years into his career but billed as a solo debut, American Romance may be Nelson’s best, most cohesive release to date. —M.L.

For years, Nashville’s Kristina Murray has been the definition of “real heads know” when it comes to left-of-center, traditionally influenced country music — beloved locally, respected nationally, but just short of breaking through. Little Blue is Murray’s moment, full of bluesy honky-tonk rompers and Telecaster twang that is always searching for a way out of the dark. “I’ve been left out, left behind and misunderstood,” she sings on “Watchin’ the World Pass Me By.” With an album like Little Blue, we can only hope those days are over. —M.M.

The latest guitar-heavy indie record from S.G. Goodman has little to do, sonically, with country or even roots music as it’s traditionally defined. But the Kentucky singer-songwriter so dramatically leveled up her impressionistic Southern gothic storytelling on this 2025 collection — from the funk-folk of “Fire Sign” to the nine-minute celestial travelogue “Heaven Song” — that we couldn’t help but acknowledge this show-stopping collection. If you still need convincing, just listen to “Snapping Turtle,” a series of vignette portraits of teenage mothers, praying for grace, and summers spent in Paris, Tennessee, with a chorus that sums up the affecting album quite nicely: “Small towns where my mind gets stuck.” —J.B.

The greatest storyteller in the Lone Star state returned with another knock-out collection of songs, and this time we didn’t have to wait seven-some-odd years between records. The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy is a gut-punch mix of sweeping tales of American original sin (“Sons of the Second Sons,” “Annie”) and the indignities of aging (“South Texas Lawman,” “Pinocchio in Vegas”), alongside a character sketch of a road-weary singer who seems a whole lot like McMurtry himself (“opening for Isbell in some cavernous room,” he sings in “Sailing Away”). McMurtry keeps getting better and better as a songwriter in his middle age, and his latest collection makes that even more clear. —J.B.

Jake Owen hit a hard reset on his career with the outlaw-leaning Dreams to Dream. It was a sharp pivot into traditional country for the Florida singer, newly independent after 20 years on major labels and considered one of the pioneers of bro country. “The truth in this album was in addressing my feelings,” an emotional Owen told Rolling Stone of the project’s introspective lyrics and vintage melodies. In the twangy title track, he lays this bare when he sings, “I just think it’s time to make a little change,” and name-drops the album’s producer, Shooter Jennings. The crescendo is “Middle Age Crazy,” where Owen laments the halfway point of life and the emotional toll of being “40 years old going on 20.” —Josh Crutchmer

“I was looking for someone to blame,” sings Madeline Edwards on the acoustic “Sunshine in the Rain,” before delivering a line far more crushing than her gentle vocal would lead you to believe: “Was it me?” Like the rest of Fruit, it’s a stunning document of healing in progress, a result of living through grief and figuring out a way forward with it, not despite it. Written in the wake of her brother’s suicide — his recorded voice opens the album — Edwards navigates loss, trauma, and her own self-doubt in an unforgettable, genre-blending record. —M.M.

Caylee Hammack is a should-be country star who has been flying just under the radar for the past half decade: Her 2019 debut single “Family Tree” remains a stunner. The Georgia native’s latest, Bed of Roses, is Hammack’s finest work yet, one that displays her command of stomping rockers and hushed lullabies alike on songs like “Oh, Kara” and “Breaking Dishes.” It’s a knockout collection of brightly polished traditional country that highlights Hammack’s warbling voice, which bears more than a little resemblance to one of her clearest influences: Dolly Parton. —J.B.

Mavis Staples’ stunning Sad and Beautiful World sees the 86-year-old Chicago soul legend transform disparate material — by Frank Ocean, Leonard Cohen, Gillian Welch, Tom Waits, and others — into her most powerful statement as a solo artist in more than a decade. At times, Staples’ zen reflectiveness feels like a photo negative of Cohen’s grimly dark late records. Like those collections, it documents a legend brimming with life even as they confront mortality. But Staples comes to the opposite conclusions, drawing even more depth and power in her faith, even, or especially, as she finds it fractured. —J.B. 

Tennessee Lightning, the first album in four years from Ashley Monroe, plays like a modern-day jukebox — in the best way possible. The 17-song album swings from daydreamin’ indie pop to cinematic roots rock, tried-and-true country and pew-filling gospel, all while grounded in the down-to-earth storytelling that’s made her one of the most trusted storytellers in Nashville.  For the album, Monroe recruited collaborators like country legend Marty Stuart, Raconteurs member Brendan Benson, and producer T Bone Burnett, among others; each swing into the album’s jukebox rotation seamlessly, especially Stuart, who adds a soft twang of the guitar to thoughtful number “The Touch.” It’s an expansive album, so dig in today by adding “Closer,” “Hot Rod Pipe Dream,” and “The Touch” to your playlist. —M.L.

On Corn Queen, Hailey Whitters folds quintessential country-isms — instrumentally and lyrically — into a record that feels both classic and of the moment. She takes a corny phrase like “hitching my wagon” and turns it into a genuine earworm. And across its 16 tracks, she moves from tender storytelling on “Casseroles” to sharp lyricism on songs like “Prodigal Daughter,” with Molly Tuttle. “Love is love and drunk is drunk” on standout “Shotgun Wedding Baby” says it all. Whitters, seemingly schooled in the Chicks and Kacey Musgraves tradition, delivers one of the year’s best country albums. She takes the kernels of tradition and pops them into something fresh, yet familiar. —Tomás Mier

This Texas roots-punk outfit returned with a purpose following lead singer Jenni Rose’s coming out as a trans woman in the pages of this magazine earlier this year. The subsequent record is one of Vandoliers’ strongest efforts, full of fury and inner reckoning. After kicking things off with the stomp-rocker “Dead Canary,” Rose leads the band through a collection of roadhouse country (“Life Behind Bars”), swirling Texas-pop (“Bible Belt”), and open-hearted folk-punk (“Dead in a Ditch”). “These times are as hard as they come,” Rose sings on the latter. Life Behind Bars is a righteous rejoinder to hatred and a joyful plea for community that was most needed during this profoundly dark year. —J.B.

Margo Price has been one of the genre’s most prolific songwriters, with a passionate, independent spirit that channels outlaw legends of the past. After straying a bit from her roots on recent LPs, Price made her return to a more country sound on Hard Headed Woman, a tight and fiery album that found her ruminating on the state of the world. “Don’t Wake Me Up” tipped its cap to Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and featured protest singer Jesse Welles; “Losing Streak” was an autobiographical look-back at struggles she faced when first landing in Nashville; and “Close to You” smoldered for a lost love. The highlight though was infectious single “Don’t Let the Bastards Get You Down,” an empowering anthem for a fraught era. —D.K.

Cowboy singer Charley Crockett is wildly prolific: Over the past decade, he’s released a whopping 15 albums. He finally made his best one yet with Dollar a Day, his second album with producer Shooter Jennings (who happened to produce more than a few LPs on this year-end list). The LP plays like a mashup between a soundtrack to a spaghetti western and one for a 1970s crime film, as Crockett retells his origin story as a lean-and-mean street performer who resists being seduced by corporate Nashville. “Crucified Son” is a high-water mark — “I was born the lucky one,” he declares  — while “Tennessee Quick Cash” proves Crockett knows how to boogie. —Joseph Hudak

Growth and movement are all over Kelsey Waldon’s 10th album, Every Ghost. The Kentucky singer-songwriter employs unfussy arrangements that lean toward 1970s country as she examines personal evolution (“Ghost of Myself”) and sobriety (“Lost in My Idlin’”), offering herself grace for missteps. Family roots show up in “My Kin,” while the low-end thump of “Tiger Lilies” anchors a story about replanting a departed relative’s flowers. “Nursery Rhyme” laments a country in disarray, but with the rousing “Let It Lie,” she steels herself to persevere through any struggles. —Jon Freeman

Eric Church has never paid much mind to fulfilling expectations, and instead of shying away from the gospel sounds he debuted at the country fest Stagecoach in 2024, he brought the choir with him into the studio and doubled down with orchestral strings and horns. The result is a record that is both dazzling and challenging, upending the idea of what country music is — or at least the type of country music that first made Church a Nashville star. It is also a masterwork, furthering cementing Church’s legacy as a try-anything artist, one with more in common with David Bowie or Bob Dylan than his Nashville peers. —J.H.

North Carolina native Carter Faith created her own utopia on Cherry Valley, one of the best country debuts in recent memory. Over 15 tracks produced with flair by Tofer Brown, the 25-year-old mixes traditional country with countrypolitan gloss and a dash of Nineties twang. The results are exhilarating, especially the wonderfully spiraling “If I Had Never Lost My Mind…,” with its massive vocal crescendo, and the smoldering “Betty,” about a man-stealing modern-day “Jolene.” Faith isn’t afraid to push boundaries: “Sex, Drugs & Country Music” is a portrait of a woman who knows exactly who she is and where she’s headed. —J.H.

Tyler Childers has been preaching his righteous Kentucky gospel for 10 years, and the Rick Rubin-produced Snipe Hunter triples down on the trailblazing he’s known for. He sings about hunting and Hindu scripture while name-checking songs by everyone from Cyndi Lauper to Stephen Foster and exploring new sonic territory like garage rock and Phil Spector pop. There’s a riff about koala STDs on “Down Under,” and Hare Krishna chants open the Scottish folk-inspired ballad “Tom Cat and a Dandy.” Snipe Hunter makes every risk feel natural, establishing Childers as arguably the most visionary artist in country music today. It is 2025’s must-hear country album. —J.B.