The Best Mainstream Country Albums of 2025
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Irrespective of the definitions, the point of highlighting the best “mainstream” albums each year is to reward artists and the industry when they get it right within the closest proximity to Music Row.
Sam Riggs and His Flaming Guitar, Larry Joe Taylor Fest, 2017
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See, don’t feel excluded. Being a Texas music fan can be embarrassing too. And after all the work people have done to plead with folks to not look at Larry Joe Taylor Fest as a drunken dudebro convention in a field no less. I don’t think Waylon done it this way. Or Sturgill.
Song Review – Jason Isbell’s “Cumberland Gap”
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The second song from Jason Isbell’s impending album ‘The Nashville Sound’ all but certifies what we had suspicions of before and what Isbell has been saying in the media previously, which is the June 16th release will be a much more rock ‘n roll affair than some of his recent efforts, and the title is more tongue-in-cheek
Ten Of These Artists/Bands Aren’t Country in the Slightest, One Is a Lie….
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Stupid list thing going around the innernets these days asking music folks to list off then bands they’ve seen live, but one is a lie. As a similar exercise to get your country music brain muscles firing and to test your true acumen on the genre, let’s see if you can navigate this difficult intellectual exercise.
Album Review – Brad Paisley’s “Love and War”
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Are we just so happy to hear a mainstream record that doesn’t alienate us or let us down that we can construe a few good songs into a strong effort? Maybe that’s the case, but any work is only fair to judge beside its peers, and right now Paisley is one of the few setting the pace for decency in popular country music.
Album Review – Angaleena Presley’s “Wrangled”
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Uncaged, unhinged, and at times even inappropriate, Wrangled is Angaleena Presley making the record she wants to, be damned of the bridges left aflame and the apple carts upset. It is an unusual record, in both sound production and theme. But it also remains solidly country, Angaleena country, where no recess of the unsettled mind is off limits.
Study: Country Music Now Mentions Drugs More Than Any Other Genre
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Whether you consider it country music getting more cool, or country music losing its historic hold on the squeaky-clean, family-friendly spot on the radio dial, popular country music songs now carry more references to drugs than the lyrics of any other major American genre, even more than rap.
Ticking Timebomb: Country Music Now Has 12 Months to Formulate a Post-Radio Plan
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American music radio as it is currently constructed will implode, and likely in the next 12 to 18 months. No amount of headlines and recent news should be needed to influence anyone’s opinion on that. If you’ve been paying attention to the quarterly numbers of America’s two largest radio station owners, you would know this already.
Miranda Lambert Should Kick Canaan Smith’s Ass For “Like You That Way”
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Canaan Smith, Cole Swindell, Chase Bryant, Chase Rice, Chris Lane, who are these clowns? It’s like one douchebag with many faces. Their songs, their styles, their personalities are indistinguishable and interchangeable. They might as well be the same person. Nashville’s overcrowded enough these days. Pick one of these guys and release all the music through them.
Album Review – Joseph Huber’s “The Suffering Stage”
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Old, forgotten memories get stirred to the forefront. Theories on life are recalled and reflected upon. And you don’t end up more happy like music is supposed to do, you end up a little sad and nostalgic, but in a way that’s strangely comforting in a manner simple happiness is incapable of delivering.
Dean Dillon on Modern Country: “Every Song is About the Same Damn Thing.”
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Songwriter and performer Dean Dillon has more skins on the wall than Kodiak Jack, and just his handlebar mustache is more manly than all the moronic Bro-Country songwriters on Music Row lumped together and tied in a bundle. Your favorite George Strait songs? There’s a good chance they were written by Dean Dillon.
Angaleena Presley Teams with Yelawolf on “Country” (Video Premier)
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You’re not quite sure exactly what message Angaleena Presley is trying to drive home when you first pull up the track. But things get turned up a big notch when Nashville resident and hip-hop artist Yelawolf, who is a well-known critic of arena rap and corporate country, goes careening into a tirade.
Book Review – John Prine’s “Beyond Words”
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It’s not very common that you can preface a 70-year-old folk country songwriter that never had a big hit and the 14-year-olds in your family have probably never heard of as a “hot commodity,” but that’s exactly what John Prine feels like these days. “Beyond Words” is a songbook combined with a photo anthology in big, coffee-table form.