2025 Saving Country Music Single of the Year Nominees

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We’ve run down the nominees for Album of the Year and Song of the Year. Now it’s time to give some love to the songs that simply get stuck in out heads and remind us of the sheer joy of music. We call these the Single of the Year nominees, and they’re the toe-tappers, the boot-scooters, and the earworms. These are the songs you sing at the top of your lungs and then hum all day after you hear them.

PLEASE NOTE: Just because a song isn’t listed here doesn’t mean it’s being snubbed or forgotten. Picking the best songs is always even more subjective than the best albums. We’re not looking to pit songs and songwriters against each other, we’re looking to combine our collective perspectives and opinions into a pool of musical knowledge for the benefit of everyone.

By all means, if you have a song or a list of songs you think are the best of 2024 and want to share, please do so in the comments section below. Feedback will factor into the final tabulations for the winner, but this is not an up and down vote. Try to convince us why you think a song should win.

Joshua Ray Walker – “Keys to the Tacoma”

When you talk about catchy country singles that you don’t feel embarrassed to listen to, Joshua Ray Walker has assembled an entire album of them in his 2025 release Tropicana. With his knack for constructing big melodies and singing them like a songbird, he decided to write and record an entire album around the concept, seeding a track list with the kind of summer radio singles and beach songs that we all get nostalgic for.

You could pick multiple songs from Tropicana to highlight here (Honorable Mention goes to “I Don’t Wanna Be Alone”). But “Keys To The Tacoma” feels like that summer song that becomes part of your lasting memories from 20 years ago that just happens to be brand new. That’s the magic Joshua Ray Walker pulls off.

Jake Worthington – “It Ain’t The Whiskey”

When talking about the surge of young new traditionalists saving country music in real time, make sure you don’t forget to mention Jake Worthington. Not dissimilar to Zach Top and others, Jake Worthington has captured the greatness of ’90s country, but with new songs and a fresh face that young and old can enjoy together.

Worthington might have discovered his breakout single. “It Ain’t The Whiskey” has been on fire since its release, and is the top streamed song in his catalog. It was inspired by the true story of when a love interest got Jake’s heart fluttering and tires swerving, resulting in getting pulled over for suspected DUI. The song appears on Worthington’s 2025 album When I Write The Song.

Kelsey Waldon – “Tiger Lilies”

Kelsey Waldon’s writing has always been uncommonly involved and thoughtful for country. On her new album Every Ghost, she focuses more on simply telling relatable and personal stories in song, resulting in a more accessible experience. “Tiger Lilies” is about the flowers bequeathed to Waldon by her grandmother. Though her grandmother is no longer around, the flowers keep her grandmother’s memory blooming and alive in the corporal world every spring.

As opposed to this song being rendered all sweet and sentimental though, the sound of “Tiger Lilies” is that of a hard-charging Outlaw country song, just with a personal aspect to it. Sentimental as it may be to Waldon, the song is also just a banger that you can’t help but keep pressing repeat on.

Tyler Childers – “Bitin’ List”

As critics tongue bathe Tyler’s new record Snipe Hunter with vociferous praise about it being his most “personal” or “spiritual” album or other such nonsense simply because they overdubbed some Hare Krishna chanting on a track, Childer’s actually released a record with some of the most wild and harebrained bangers of his career.

To go along with sport hunting millionaires, bragging about $1,000 watches, and rattling on about Koalas with chlamydia, Childer’s delivered us “Bitin’ List,” which is one hell of raucous, vengeful good time that even the most even-keeled among us can find some guilty pleasure in.

Silverada – “Texas 42”

Leave it to Mike Harmeier to do right what so many mainstream/Bro-Country songs get wrong, which is running through lists of cultural references about rural America without any story or soul to tie them together instead of making them feel real in your mind. The Silverada frontman’s greatest knack has always been to understand how words can jar loose vivid memories through song, but only if you know where to poke the brain, and how.

You can sing about a dominoes game, carburetors, tobacco stains, but if it doesn’t come with that lived blue collar experience, they’re just words. “Texas 42” is the title track to an acoustic album Silverada is released in installments throughout 2025.

Sunny Sweeney – “Houston Belongs To Me”

Sunny Sweeney did her time opening for big acts, and got her taste of the mainstream for sure. But instead of spending this phase of her career being envious, she’s embraced the honky tonk way of life, not just in sound, but in attitude. The songs from her new album Rhinestone Requiem are of the honky tonks, and for the honky tonks.

Sweeney co-wrote eight of the ten tracks of the new album, and there are some real gems in here you’d swear were classics from back in the ’70s. “Houston Belongs To Me” co-written with Brennen Leigh is the perfect specimen of heartbreak country, utilizing geography to craft a story most all can relate to.

Matt Daniel – “Long Way Home”

Matt Daniel made it onto the musical map of many with his previous album All I’ll Ever Need from 2022, especially the song “Weatherman” that burrowed deep in our souls, and has refused to leave since. His new 2025 album The Poet picks up where that last album left off, including another one of those one-in-a-million masterpiece country songs with an incredible melody called “Long Way Home” that closes out the album.

Matt Daniel has a voice that is pitch perfect for this type of traditional country. And when get gets a hold of a great song like “Long Way Home,” the result is country music bliss.

Turnpike Troubadours – “Heaven Passing Through”

“Heaven Passing Through” is also up for Song of the Year, along with “On The Red River” from the Turnpike album The Price of Admission. But with the way “Heaven Passing Through” doesn’t just boasts superior writing, but has a way of seeping into your bones, and lingering with you hours and days after you last heard it, it feels worthy of being considered in the Single of the Year category as well.

There’s a lot of specificity to the verses to this song that seem to speak to a deeper story or parallel narrative, like the reference to working a late shift at the nursing home, or washing X’s off your hands. But “Heaven Passing Through” might just be a song about gratefulness and the beauty of moments that employs a multi-generational perspective to its timeline. Either way, it’s a great song, and one that proves that great songs can also come with an infectiousness and immediacy, and don’t always have to go down like a bitter pill.

Joe Stamm Band – “Territory Town”

Releasing their new album Little Crosses in the dead of summer was smart timing for the Joe Stamm Band. It was a summer album full of serious heartland rock, songs that stoke sentimental memories, and a little bit of recklessness to make it ripe to bark at the moon and drive too fast to, basking in the moments that warm summer evenings are most agreeable for.

The opening song “Territory Town” might as well be straight from the John Cougar Mellencamp catalog, or Springsteen’s mid-career output. And though the folks in the mainstream would never consider it such, for the Joe Stamm faithful, “Territory Town” was their Song of the Summer.

Ella Langley – “Choosin Texas”

You don’t need to be told how hard it is for women in country, and especially for a single from a woman to make any kind of noise in the mainstream. But believe it or not, based completely off the strength of this song co-written and co-produced by Miranda Lambert, “Choosin’ Texas” has made it to #1 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, even as it meanders at #16 on the radio chart to close out the year.

Langely’s famous duet with Riley Green called “You Look Like You Love Me” has won a gazillion awards, but even it couldn’t get to #1 on Hot Country Songs. It peaked at #7, and with a male counterpart to help it along. “Choosin’ Texas” might be one of those tracks we look back on years from now as a landmark for Langley, and for traditional country music.

Honorable Mention:

  • Kathryn Legendre – “Here’s Your Honky Tonk”
  • Randall King, Braxton Keith – “Cheatin’ On My Honky Tonk”
  • Kristina Murray – “Watching The World Pass Me By”
  • Kaitlin Butts – “The Middle”
  • Lance Roark – “Lucky Penny”
  • Luke Bell – “The King Is Back”
  • Josh Ward – “Talkin’ To Your Picture On The Wall”
  • Dan Lepien – “Neon Dream”
  • Hailey Whitters – “High On The Hog”
  • Spencer Hatcher – “The Way She Lies” 
  • Walker Montgomery – “Almost, so Close, so Long, Goodbye”

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