If you need any further illustration of the creative explosion that Jesse Welles has been the catalyst and accelerant for over the last year or so, appreciate that he just released a 63-song album.
On “The Last Kings of Babylon,” Jason Boland tries to summarize the last 25 or so years in music, from the personal and the professional, to the sacred and the profane.
We didn’t really know what to expect from the Grand Ole Opry’s 100th Anniversary celebration on NBC Wednesday night (3-19). We hoped it would be a cavalcade of actual country stars singing actual country music.
You don’t enjoy SXSW—the annual musical gathering in Austin, Texas every mid March. You endure it. You survive it. Here are Saving Country Music’s biggest takeaways from SXSW 2025.
“The Giver” is fundamentally a pop song, though with a very strong and prominent fiddle part, which is so pronounced in the song, it truly does pull it into the realm of country, or at least, country pop.
“Lonesome Drifter” gives you another good haul of original Charley Crockett songs that are immediately entertaining, and that endear you ever further to the man and the mythos.
Writing and recording divorce records in the era of non-disclosure agreements has to make for a difficult task. But if there’s any wordsmith out there in the world capable of navigating those hurdles, it’s probably Jason Isbell.
By mining his deepest emotions of love, devotion, and thankfulness, Justin Wells composes songs that resonate deeply with anyone who finds themselves in similar circumstances, and those who aspire to.
The Devil Makes Three is blue collar music for a bleak world bifurcated between the have’s and have not’s. It’s never pretty. It’s a feral, tattooed, and pierced. But it’s nonetheless inspiring from its dogged persistence.
It very well could be that the son of Hank Williams Jr., and the grandson of Hank Williams will be responsible for releasing the worst song in the entire pantheon of what anyone could ever construe as “country music” in 2025.
It’s the intimate nature of the approach to “Lonely Mountain Town” that brings the emotion of the songs to the surface, and centers the attention of the audience upon the story.
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.
Tony Logue and his band 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.
Even before Jesse Welles wrote, recorded, and released this fully formed 10-song studio album amid sometimes daily song releases on social media, his musical output hovered somewhere near the impossible.
There is no easy or succinct way to regard The War and Treaty’s new album Plus One. It starts off terribly, but goes on to include perhaps some of the best songs of their entire catalog. It’s not really country at all, until it is…
Already opening shows for Zach Top, he’s got a similar sound to Zach, is a good guitar player as well, but it’s Cole Goodwin’s songwriting that is garnering attention, and distinguishing him from other neotraditionalist.
Even those well versed in the wide expanses of the Western music canon will be strongly intrigued and delighted to hear the decidedly singer/songwriter-style of Western music that Cam Pierce crafts.
Similar to many recent Super Bowl halftime performances, the Grammy Awards were primarily dominated by lip-synced performances and choreographic dancing without a live instrument to be seen on stage.
Even among the wave of new country performers, Ty Myers is still unique. At only 17, he’s just a pup with ruddy cheeks. But he stands confidently on stage, writes his own songs, and sings them with a strong and soulful delivery.
Inspired by Lafayette and the greater Acadiana region, expect Cajun, expect country, expect some swamp pop and vintage R&B. But most importantly, expect the distinct, the savory, and the unexpected from Miss Tess’s Cher Rêve.
The name will probably be familiar to independent country fans. Whether you’ve seen it ascribed as TJ McFarland, or his stage name Tennessee Jet, he’s a primary member of the Cody Jinks songwriting collective.
Some folks forget that comedy in some ways is just as integral to the classic versions of country music as fiddle and steel guitar. It’s just that all of these elements have been forsaken by certain modern versions of commercial country.
What happens at Mile 0 Fest in Key West doesn’t stay in Key West. It resonates throughout the Texas/ Red Dirt world, into Americana, and throughout independent country for the rest of the year.
Promising to deliver a unifying moment, Carrie Underwood accomplished that very thing, despite the incredibly polarizing circumstances, and technical difficulties. And she did it through her talent, poise, and grace.