Best Country and Roots Albums of 2025 So Far

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As we reach the halfway pole of the musical year, it’s time to reflect back on the best albums that have been released so far. There are some great projects that you should make sure don’t slip under your radar, including the top nine listed below that should be considered early Album of the Year contenders. If we’re being honest, 2025 feels like a slightly down year for top albums so far. But that doesn’t mean there’s still not some great stuff you don’t want to miss.

PLEASE NOTE: This only includes albums that have been reviewed by Saving Country Music so far. Just because an album is not included here doesn’t mean it’s not good, or won’t be reviewed in the future.

Recommendations and opinions on albums is encouraged, including leaving your own list of favorite albums in the comments section below. But nothing has been “forgotten,” and no list is illegitimate just because one particular album is left off, or a certain album is included. So be constructive with your comments.

Aside from the first nine albums being the top recommendations, the albums are presented in no particular order.

Sam Stoane – Tales of the Dark West


Treat yourself to a true expression of country and Western music, with an emphasis on the Western, carried to the innermost caverns of your heart by the evocative tones of Sam Stoane who awakens dormant emotions inside of you as she deftly delivers inspired songs and Western tales fit for premier acclaim.

It’s hard to not get giddy when you stumble upon a performer like this who clearly holds such promise in helping to shepherd something as obscure and undervalued as Western music to new and younger audiences. Sam Stoane does this by making the music feel cool, present, current, and fresh, while at the same time adhering to the rigid confines of the Western art form, and doing so with such love, reverence, passion, and conviction. (read review)

Turnpike Troubadours – The Price of Admission


Just like every Turnpike Troubadours song, album, and era does, patient listening pays off as the depth of the lyricism slowly reveals itself, and the melodies nestle into the comfy recesses of your gray matter. The fact that a Troubadours song doesn’t always reel you in automatically is what also graces it with the gift of longevity. This is why no matter how old a Turnpike song is, in the right moment and frame of mind, it can still impart to you that first time feeling.

Maybe most important to note, The Price of Admission is a surprisingly twangy and country affair. This isn’t relevant to all the tracks. But multiple times when listening, you’re surprised at just how honky tonk the sound is. Hot steel guitar solos from Hammerin’ Hank Early burst through the mix, while Ryan Engleman explores the more woody, earthen tones of his Telecaster.

Where their previous, return album A Cat in the Rain might have been a little too blended and sedate, and might have needed a newer song or two near the end, The Price of Admission feels like the more full-bodied effort with bolder textures that will burrow beneath beneath your skin until it infects your bones in extended releases of joy. (read review)

Juliet McConkey – Southern Front

It’s a thing of beauty how the gentle but powerful musings of Juliet McConkey overwhelm your emotional faculties in disarming waves, awakening feelings often left dormant in the passing of everyday life. The sound of her voice is spellbinding, both through it’s rich and inspiring tones, and how it leaves you stupefied of how it emanates from a woman that is not known more widely from the gifts she possesses.

Like that first warm breeze and burst of sun that breaks the frost of Winter, Southern Front confers womb-like comfort in a cold and impersonal world. So with such promise behind her music, why isn’t McConkey out there doing the music hustle? Why isn’t she filling up the calendar with live appearances, hiring publicists and pursuing labels to make a big push behind this project, and seeding the internet with endless Tik-Toks to spread the word? It’s all explained in the eight chapters of this album. (read review)

Matt Daniel – The Poet


Similar to the graphite-sketched cover art, there’s nothing fancy or frilly about what Matt Daniel does on The Poet. It’s just honest by-God country music, with nine songs exploring the seasons of Matt’s life and the emotions he experienced while in the midst of them

Matt Daniel is a man and a voice that in previous eras the world would’ve risen up to support, put on a tour bus and big stages all across this land, and parade around like a hero. Now it’s up to us—the true fans of country music—to rise up and sing his praises, tell our friends and neighbors, and if nothing else, make sure he finds enough support to sing the next song, play the next show, and record the next album.

Because Matt Daniel doesn’t do this because he wants to. He does it because he needs to. And country music needs voices and songwriters like Matt Daniel. (read review)

Ken Pomeroy – Cruel Joke

Waves of melancholy emanate from your audio source, first prickling your senses like a slightly uncomfortable breeze moving over the skin that makes you crave something more warm and saccharine, but ultimately proving to be effective in welling repressed memories to the forefront of the mind in a cathartic and cleansing action, leaving one with a deeper sense of comfort, and something closely resembling a quiet ease.

Ken Pomeroy requests attentive listening to really unravel the beauty of this album, and sometimes that request feels lofty. But the opening song “Pareidolia,” and her song with John Moreland “Coyote” confer a bit more accessibility. Some will regard this album as one of the best of the annual cycle. The songs carry that weighty aspect to them that often precedes that assessment. Whether it demands your attention enough will be the question. For some, it will positively enthrall. (read review)

Tony Logue – Dark Horse


Tough as nails and uncompromising, Tony Logue is a blue collar hero of modern country rock. Tony Logue and his band The 184 have the uncanny ability to cut through all the pretentiousness that seems to permeate most all contemporary music to serve real and raw human emotions free from embellishment. Some need the cream, sugar, and cute flavors to choke down the bitterness. Tony Logue is coffee served black, and strong.

Dark Horse is one blue collar and hard-nosed song after another, served up with Tony’s unvarnished and authentic drawl. He doesn’t sing, he punches. This music isn’t pretty, it’s powerful. Even when the music turns uncharacteristically soft in the song “So Help Me God,” it’s to contrast with the most desperate and swearing sentiments on the entire album. Multiple songs about the love he feels for his woman aren’t as much love songs as they are odes of loyalty and trustworthiness. (read review)

Cam Pierce – A Thousand Lonely Horses


If you’re looking for an album not just to hear, but listen to, that will take you on a journey out West and to the unfamiliar, but with tones and textures that still rest comfortably in your mind and spirit, let A Thousand Lonely Horses spirit you away from the mundane, leaving your imagination stoked, and your soul filled.

The music of Cam Pierce is not going to grab you by the collar, and shake you until you pay attention. It’s too thoughtful for that. Instead the experience goes from pleasant but maybe unremarkable feeling, to deeply compelling the more you listen as the wrinkles in the writing and approach reveal themselves.

Like all great Western music, it’s not just the imagery the lyricism evokes of open spaces and wild landscapes. It’s the little nuggets of wisdom embedded in the verses that feel so prophetic when set to music, no matter how plainspoken they might be delivered. Cam Pierce has a pleasing voice that avoids affectation, and is more focused on being a proper steward of the songs. (read review)

Jesse Daniel – Son of the San Lorenzo


Some question why Jesse Daniel would name his new album after his previously recorded song “Son of the San Lorenzo,” and record the song again. It’s because this album is truly Jesse Daniel. This is his life story transcribed in song, starting at birth, and going until the inevitable end. Though Jesse has always been forthright in sharing intimate details of his life through his songs—including his illicit drug use and incarceration—this is the first time he does so in a mostly complete and nearly linear fashion.

Through this challenge Daniel placed on himself to present his life like a story, it helped bring out the best in his songwriting, infused passion in his delivery, and graced his words with authenticity. Whether you listen stem to stern or select out a specific song, Jesse’s honesty, world earned wisdom, and sweat equity into self-improvement shines through in the songs. Son of the San Lorenzo is like a concept record with Jesse Daniel as the central character. (read review)

Olivia Ellen Lloyd – Do It Myself


Some albums you simply enjoy. Then other albums you listen to, and you feel like you’re living inside of them, and subsequently, they live inside of you. You carry their sentiment and melodies with you throughout the day. The stories impact you like they’re your own. You become emotionally invested in the moments, and the outcomes. They’re more than albums. They’re collections of emotional catalysts that you call upon because their potency is uncommon.

Olivia Ellen Lloyd’s Do It Myself is one of those albums. If you’re one of the souls it captures, it’s an album you’re destined to return to all year, and in subsequent years to come. It’s one of those albums that you measure all of the other albums against as the year unfolds. You could consider it a breakup record, but it’s a bit more textured and varied than that. It’s definitely a heartbreaker, but it’s not fair to characterize it as a downer. It’s leaves you too fulfilled for that. (read review)

Other Highly Recommended Albums


Weldon Henson – Stone Cold Country Gold (review)

Dan Lepien – The Honky Tonk Traditional (review)

Kat Hasty – Time of Your Life (review)

Pug Johnson – El Cabron (review)

Mason Via – Self-Titled (review)

Caitlin Cannon – Love Addict (review)

Country Honk – Bad Decision (review)

The Wilder Blue – Still in the Runnin’ (review)

Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives – Space Junk (review)

The Moran Tripp Band – Jumper’s Hole (review)

The Castellows – Homecoming (review)

Alison Krauss & Union Station – Arcadia (review)

Jason Isbell – Foxes in the Snow (review)

The Devil Makes Three – Spirits (review)

Justin Wells – Cynthiana (review)

Kristina Murray – Little Blue (review)

Charles Wesley Godwin – Lonely Mountain Town (review)

The Doohickeys – All Hat No Cattle (review)

Christoper Seymore – King of Nothing (review)

Lola Kirke – Trailblazer (review)

Josh Ward – Sam Ol’ Cowboy, Different Rodeo (review)

Willie Nelson – Oh What A Beautiful World (review)

Miss Tess – Cher Rêve (review)

Jesse Welles – Middle (review)

The War and Treaty – Plus One (review)

Charley Crockett – Lonesome Drifter (review)

Ty Myers – The Select (review)

Chaparelle – Western Pleasure (review)

Big City Brian Wright – Sky Trucker (review)

Tennessee Jet – Ranchero (review)

Jason Boland & The Stragglers – The Last Kings of Babylon (review)

The AMs – Here Comes That Broken Heart (review)

Bryce Leatherwood – Self-Titled (review)

Other Reviewed Albums:

Jon Pardi – Honkytonk Hollywood (review)

Ringo Starr – Look Up (review)

Eric Church – Evangeline vs. The Machine (review)

Morgan Wallen – I’m The Problem (review)

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