On Sam Barber’s AMA Win for Breakthrough Country Artist
On Monday, May 25th, the most unimportant awards show to country music, the American Music Awards, happened at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Morgan Wallen won the Best Male Country Artist, Ella Langley Best Female Country Artist and Best Country Song (“Choosin’ Texas”), and Megan Moroney’s Cloud 9 won Best Country Album. Zac Brown Band also won for Best Country Duo or Group—a rather wild pick, though perhaps a nod to their recent residency at The Sphere in Vegas.
Zac Brown winning anything in 2026 really tells you all you need to know about the American Music Awards. But the win that has seemed to stir the most interest, and that has some pontificating that it is some sort of big breakthrough moment or transformational shift in country is Sam Barber winning the AMA for Breakthrough Country Artist over Tucker Wetmore and Zach Top.
Hey, good for Sam Barber. He seems like a well put together young man, has some good songs for sure, and resides outside of the mainstream Nashville power structure that usually preordains such wins for whoever is next on the conveyor belt out of Music Row, not someone like Sam Barber who doesn’t even sniff country radio play, and isn’t considered for country music’s other major awards.
But where does this rate on the scale of the big breakthroughs from Sturgill Simpson, Chris Stapleton, Tyler Childers, Zach Bryan, or even Zach Top who lost to Sam Barber? It’s hard to say it rates there at all. Sam Barber’s big breakout happened a couple of years ago via support from TikTok, and if anything, he’s now coasting a little bit, and cashing in with this AMA win.
Again, they’re just the AMAs, and though some are making a big deal since it’s a fan-voted award, in some ways that’s what makes it the most uninteresting. Fan-voted awards are more a measure of who is most effective at activating their fan bases as opposed to a true barometer of public sentiment. Sure, the people spoke for Sam Barber. But the truth is the majority of people had no idea the AMAs even happened on Monday, and even fewer care.
That’s not to say Sam Barber and his fans shouldn’t celebrate the win, or that he isn’t popular. Of course he is, and maybe more popular than Zach Top or Tucker Wetmore at the moment. Zach Top has been trailing off, and Tucker is being propped up by the industry. But it feels like those two offer a much bigger threat to defining the future of country music (for better or worse) than Sam Barber.
It doesn’t feel like we should even be recognizing Sam Barber as a country artist at all, any more than we should be recognizing Treaty Oak Revival, BigXthaPlug, or Sam Hunt as such. When you have an artist that doesn’t fit well anywhere else and still embodies elements of country like The Red Clay Strays or The Mavericks back in the day, it’s easier to be more permissive to them in country.
But Sam Barber is a contemporary folk artist who has so much more similar in style, sound and approach to the music of Zach Bryan, Noah Kahan, Joshua Slone, and other massive artists that have been dominating charts and tour grosses over the last few years. You could also lump other major acts into that category such as The Lumineers.
That doesn’t mean these artists don’t have some sort of kinship with country, or specific songs that are more country than others, or that they’re “bad.” But calling them country feels like a miscategorization.
Contemporary folk right now is a massive, massive commercially successful and critically-acclaimed genre of music all unto itself that needs to be recognized as such as opposed to being lumped in with country where it doesn’t really fit. Noah Kahan’s recent album The Great Divide spent multiple weeks at #1 on the Billboard 200, even beating out Ella Langley’s massive Dandelion.
Many of the artists in the contemporary folk world including Zach Bryan and Noah Kahan have sworn off allegiance to country. Not wanting to be called country, or to complete with country artists is one of the reasons Zach Bryan recused himself from Grammy consideration for his last album.
It’s also for these very reasons that folks are petitioning the Grammy Awards to bring back the Contemporary Folk category, similar to how they split traditional and contemporary country into two categories last year. This contemporary folk category of music is so massive at the moment, it deserves its own ecosystem. It already has massive superstars like Zach Bryan selling out stadiums, and all-genre dominant stars like Noah Kahan. Sam Barber tops many of the 2nd tier stars in country in monthly listeners, and feels like the future of contemporary folk.
It remains a heartening development in modern American music that coming out of the pandemic, so many young people are connecting with heartfelt songwriting, vulnerable lyricism, and unpretentious, simply produced music that speaks to human emotions like the stuff Sam Barber releases. He’s always felt a little to close to a Zach Bryan clone to sing the praises of him too loudly here at Saving Country Music. But you would much rather see someone like Sam Barber gaining traction than Tucker Wetmore.
Let’s call a spade a spade though. Tucker Wetmore might be more country than Sam Barber from a contemporary perspective. And artists like Zach Bryan, Noah Kahan, Sam Barber, and so many others who put songwriting first deserve their own distinction to break out into. And that distinction fits better into a contemporary version of the folk tradition than it does the country one.
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May 28, 2026 @ 6:55 am
Are the AMA’s a county award ceremony or is it an all genre show similar to the Grammys?
May 28, 2026 @ 7:35 am
All genres. But unlike the Grammys, only focus on popular music.
May 28, 2026 @ 7:38 am
They have shown multiple country categories on the show in the past, but I guess since the winners this year weren’t there in person, only country breakthrough was shown.
May 28, 2026 @ 9:52 am
That might also be the reason there’s been an unusual emphasis on Sam Barber’s win. Him being the only one there again emphasizes the “also ran” nature of the AMAs.
May 28, 2026 @ 7:30 am
I’d say that the Mavericks, back in the day, were pretty country. Later on, they branched out in spanish and other genres. It’s the Tractors, I think, that were considered country back in the day but had no business being considered that.
May 28, 2026 @ 9:58 am
Yes those early records are definitely country.
May 28, 2026 @ 8:03 am
Screw the AMAs. There’s only one thing this week worth talking about in country music and it’s that Colby Acuff leaked his album a week early on YouTube with an accompanying thirty minute music video and it’s the best outlaw country I’ve heard since high top mountain. LFG!
May 28, 2026 @ 8:09 am
I first stumbled across this kid a couple of years ago after hearing his version of “Jersey Giant,” and that performance immediately caught my attention. His earlier releases seemed a little more rooted in a traditional country sound, but the newer album definitely leans more into the Zach Bryan style of Americana/heartland folk than straight country music.
It’s still a strong record, but it does feel like there’s been some influence from the industry pushing him in that direction because that sound is connecting with a wider audience right now. Regardless, the songwriting and authenticity still seem to be there.
May 28, 2026 @ 8:25 am
It was founded by Dick Clark back in the 70s when a fan voted awards show was a new idea. I went to a few and they were fun but nobody really cared who won. I once overheard two competing artists taking about how they were going to try to sneak out after their category was over.
May 28, 2026 @ 8:26 am
I can’t tell Tucker Wetmore from Riley Green. Both of them get waxed and take their shirts off.
May 28, 2026 @ 9:54 am
…thank god, there came a “shirt” at the end.
May 28, 2026 @ 8:46 am
I can take Zach Bryan and his clones in small doses but, holy Stromboli, these guys release albums with 20 or 30 songs on them and it kind of puts you in an almost trance-like daze after awhile. I think if the Grammys were to make a new category it should be WGWG — whiny guys with guitars.
May 28, 2026 @ 10:50 am
Barber’s latest album has 13 songs on it. He has been relatively prolific, he’s essentially released an album or EP every year since 2023.
Bryan is more guilty of what you are talking about than Barber. And I think it has started to impact Bryan negatively. Don’t get me wrong, he is still massive, but his January album has essentially already faded from the discourse and while releasing the 20-30 song mammoths (Wallen has done the same as well) games the Spotify algorithm, I also think listeners are burning out on that and struggling to sift through the chaff for the actual hay.
May 28, 2026 @ 12:09 pm
I guess I was still shell-shocked (or trance-like dazed) from the live album Barber put out earlier this year. That had 20 or more songs on it. I try to listen to everything and give it a chance, but after awhile stuff like that all runs together.
May 28, 2026 @ 12:53 pm
His 2025 album had 22 songs on it per Apple Music. Not sure if that included the “re-releases” that they did, IIRC they put it back out again with some “bonus” tracks which seems to also be an increasingly common thing to do to goose stream numbers (oh, look, this album I enjoyed 6 months ago now with more tracks!).
So yeah, he had done that, but nowhere near as bad as Bryan who seems to take the approach that “the goal is to put out 100+ songs over the span of 2-3 years between the albums and EPs.
And look, I like Barber fine and like Bryan, but a very fair complaint of the latter especially is he doesn’t have an “editor” to help him both boost his production quality, but also say “maybe lets leave that song on the cutting room floor for now”.
Course, I also think Bryan’s odd decision to release an acoustic version of the album he released days prior was also weird so it’s been a weird year for him all around!
May 28, 2026 @ 2:09 pm
If you’ve have a girlfriend or wife and have been subjected to the new Barbie movie–which is a hilarious, by the way–there’s a running “Ken” bit about certain kinds of guys, beta males you could say, who have a tendency to play “Push” by Matchbox Twenty on guitar. I wish they’d have chosen something other than a truly great song to make the bit out of, but it’s still hilarious. Zach Bryan and all the whiny guys are basically the betas in that movie, playing covers of “Push.”
I’ll have to give Sam Barber a listen, but if he’s cut from a similar cloth, I highly doubt I’ll like it.
May 28, 2026 @ 9:39 am
…”egocentrical sad bastard lamenting” would be slightly too long a categorisation, i suppose. how about “cold turkey country” then? folk it ain’t – that genre bears an intrinsic common in its name. not my cup of tea, mr. barber’s fuzzy sounding world – but a voting won is a voting won. congrats.
May 28, 2026 @ 10:46 am
Feel’s like if Top’s follow-up album hadn’t been met with such a hard “thud” it was his to take.
I can agree that Barber shouldn’t be lumped in with guys like Top or even Wetmore (never heard of him, thank the Gods), but I also think Barber winning says more that the artists that DO fit in the Country genre are either unoriginal garbage OR in the case of Top, someone coming off an album that stalled any momentum he had.
May 28, 2026 @ 1:36 pm
You might be right about that Mike.
May 28, 2026 @ 11:41 am
All this slicing and dicing of the country music genre is getting silly. Accept country music as a big tent. Go inside it and find the artists and sounds you like. Don’t worry about categories and sub categories (or sub sub categories). I’m with Tyler Childers on this. He pushed back on an Americana award saying simply “I’m a country singer”.
May 28, 2026 @ 1:38 pm
The problem is that Zach Bryan and Noah Kahan said, “I am NOT a country singer,” so you can’t place them in the country tent. So where do you place them then? They both consider themselves folk artists. So if that’s the case, folk is where they should be.
May 28, 2026 @ 6:33 pm
Well john denver wasnt really considered early on but he had quite a bit of success in country music.
May 28, 2026 @ 6:35 pm
Funny thing though, barber wins an award, it doesnt really matter. Langley wins awards, its worthy of multiple articles and total jubilation.
May 28, 2026 @ 7:42 pm
What Ella Langley has done has been historic, verified by statistics and benchmarks she has achieved. If anything, I could be writing more stories about all of the records she’s been setting. Also, I have written all of two articles with Ella Langley in the title over the last month, and both of those titles she split with others, one with Morgan Wallen, and the other with Cody Johnson. I also haven’t written about her in two weeks.
Whenever I get accused of obsessing over an artist, it’s often a two way street with whoever is making that accusation.
May 28, 2026 @ 8:46 pm
Historic is an overused term. Even with wallen, a lot of his big numbers and streaks are based off below average songs, so him n langley do have that. But like i say, when its someone you are pushing for you never say an award or a nomination didnt matter. I mean thats fine and all. Maybe i would feel differently if it was someone i liked, i dont know. I mean i do like wallen but since dangerous i believe it was, not good with album titles, his albums have been weak or getting weaker. I just feel once you pick a hill you should stay there. I think all these awards shows are tainted anymore, regardless of who is getting the noms n such. You seem to kind of bounce around depending on the who but all i said was i found it funny meaning ironical. But its all good.
May 28, 2026 @ 8:40 pm
Total Jubilation!
May 29, 2026 @ 7:45 am
Sam Barber is great, the only whining I see is this article and the comments.
May 29, 2026 @ 9:39 am
I saw him at the Ryman a few years ago and it is a show that made me feel really old. It was a very young crowd and it was one of those shows where the sound just was not right. I have listened to his last and this album and both have a good number of good songs. Country or not, I think probably not really, his albums are worth a listen.