Saving Country Music’s 2024 Album of the Year Nominees

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To see the Song of the Year nominees, CLICK HERE. To see the Single of the Year nominees, CLICK HERE.

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It’s time to engage in one of the most important exercises all year: determining who and what will be crowned the Album of the Year in 2024. The point of this exercise is not to devolve music into some sort of competition. It is to stimulate a lively discussion about what we all believe is the best, using our differing perspectives to inform each other about the music that has spoken deeply to us over the year so that we might discover something riveting that we might have missed.

This is why your feedback isn’t just encouraged, it will be considered in the final calculations. So if you have an opinion, please leave it below in the comments, including your list of top albums if you wish. However, this is not a straight up and down vote. Your opinion will count, but it will count even more if you put the effort out to convince us all why one album deserves to be considered above the others.

And if you think an album has been unfairly omitted, utilize the comments section to inform us. But please understand that there will be an upcoming Essential Albums List that will be much broader, and might include your favorites, including the “Most Essential Albums” that were right on the bubble of being considered for Album of the Year (see bottom).

…and before you comment, also remember the proper etiquette for approaching end-of-year lists.

This is just the very beginning of the end-of-year assessments at Saving Country Music. Song of the Year, Single of the Year, Artist of the Year, and many other end-of-year considerations are forthcoming, as will more album reviews from 2024 albums as we close out the year.

But right now, it’s time to highlight the 10 albums Saving Country Music feels cannot go overlooked in 2024.

Karen Jonas – The Rise and Fall of American Kitsch


With a 9.7 rating, this album is far and away the highest-rated album reviewed on Saving Country Music in 2024. This alone could make it a shoo-in for Album of the Year. But rating isn’t the only measure that goes into this decision. Impact, resonance, and other such factors also weigh in, and this album has gone criminally-under-the-radar, if not incredibly critically-acclaimed.

Simply the title of The Rise and Fall of American Kitsch feels ambitious. But not even this prepares you for what you’ll experience if you approach this album with an open mind, and as a linear work. Karen Jonas has released an exemplar take on the American concept record.

The Rise and Fall of American Kitsch is one of those career-defining albums where it all comes together, where the songs equal something greater than the sum of their parts, where an idea is expressed that we all know to be true but need a dedicated reminder of, and an artist says what we all wish we could say, but fail to find the words for, or are too afraid to admit. (read review)

Sierra Ferrell – Trail of Flowers


If you follow certain primrose paths deep into the enchanted forest, or discover a portal to the past through an antique wardrobe in a house overgrown with vines, or forage on certain mushrooms growing out from the trunks of giant trees, you might stumble upon the realm of Sierra Ferrell.

It’s a world of gingerbread cottages with round doors, fairy tale meadows of singing birds and talking flowers, and creatures of mirth that speak in limericks. It’s beautiful place for sure, yet beguiling and potentially dangerous, leading some who don’t heed the wisdom and warning of the stories told there to their ultimate doom.

Similar to Colter Wall, Sierra Ferrell has taken entirely outmoded and archaic music, and through her weaving of magic, made it more wildly popular and appealing than anyone would ever have imagined it could be in the modern era. (read review)

Red Clay Strays – Made By These Moments


Whether the world is ready for them or not, the Alabama-bred roots music collective known as the Red Clay Strays are here, and surging in a way that is reminiscent of the meteoric rise of other independent-minded performers with throwback sounds reorganizing the country music world in revolutionary ways. In bold, powerful songs, the Red Clay Strays take you places most other performers are unwilling or unable to.

The appeal for the Red Clay Strays begins with frontman Brandon Coleman’s voice and delivery. He can sound like three different singers from three different genres steeped in three separate eras all in the same phrase, shape shifting so that every single note conveys the maximal amount of emotion. He has the soul of Muscle Shoals blues, the swagger of the Sun Records era, and the conviction of those old country greats all encapsulated into one. It’s impossible to not believe every propulsive note spilling from Coleman’s guts.

Many songs and albums provide self-help inadvertently. For the Red Clay Strays and Made By These Moments, it’s active and purposeful. But don’t worry, the results aren’t Stuart Smalley-style affirmations or self-important bromides that are almost mocking of one’s intelligence. They do this self-help work with deep, resonant, and impassioned musical movements that steel the attention, raise the pulse, and enliven the spirit. (read review)

Emily Nenni – Drive & Cry


Hearkening back to a time when country sounded country, and singers were required to come with a distinctive sound, Emily Nenni has released a fun, infectious, twangy, diverse, and career-defining album that will renew your spirits in the state country music. Whether you’re looking to commiserate over a broken heart or help cut through the monotony as the miles pass by on the highway, Drive & Cry is a deft choice in a crowded country landscape.

It all comes together for Emily Nenni on her third album. Choosing to handle all the writing herself, and embracing the classic themes that one encounters in life and the honky tonk scene as opposed to trying to be too involved results in ideal material for a country album. Then Nenni delivers it all with a voice that compels intrigue all itself, demanding your attention.

For years, performers like Emily Nenni could only find an audience for their music in underground circles, and places like Robert’s Western World and Santa’s Pub in Nashville. But now the voice and sound of Emily Nenni is what listeners are on the hunt for. Drive & Cry meets this moment with an invigorated and enthusiastic version of country music that can find audiences across generations. (read more)

Shane Smith and the Saints – Norther


Perhaps no other band calls to mind the most defining and elemental moments of life than Shane Smith and the Saints. And perhaps no other album Shane Smith and the Saints have released accomplishes this better than Norther. Like the clashing of two atmospheric fronts causing an awesome upheaval of updrafts and downpours, the stormy and cumbrous moments encapsulated in this album send the soul reeling and dashing like the waves of the angry sea in the mightiest of tempests.

Instead of attempting to soften what Shane Smith and the Saints do, or trying to make excuses for it, or tempering its impact to try and widen the audience in a moment when their national recognition has never been higher, for better or worse, Norther unapologetically leans into everything at the essence of Shane Smith and the Saints. Though the “three chords and the truth” crowd may find it quite unusual, those well versed in the mythology of Shane Smith and the Saints will argue Norther definitely turns out for the better. (read review)

Kimmi Bitter – Old School


Few of the other artists we’ve experienced in the modern era stun with their reinterpretation and revitalization of the classic sounds of music from the early sixties like Kimmi Bitter, in the country genre and beyond. It’s just as much about era to Kimmi Bitter as it is genre, but the epicenter of her passion and influence are the sounds of Patsy Cline and early Countrypolitan country. This is what populates the tracks of her exquisitely-crafted and delicately refined album Old School.

These are no close approximations. Down to every last note, texture, and square inch of this album, it feels like 1963 all over again. From the way the music is written, to the instrumentation, to the The Jordanaires-style chorus singing and even the little percussive additions, Kimmi and her collaborators did their homework and then some, and deserve a slow clap for capturing the era perfectly, if nothing else. (read review)

Jamey Johnson – Midnight Gasoline


The music of Jamey Johnson isn’t a toe-tapping good time. It’s like a slow rolling locomotive, or a line of severe thunderstorms preceding a cold front plodding across the open plains, or a bulldozer moving heavy mounds of raw earthen material. It’s moody, and bluesy. The music of Jamey Johnson doesn’t go anywhere fast. But when it arrives, heaven and earth succumb to its power as it vibrates and envelops every atom in its presence. That’s the experience of Midnight Gasoline.

Though we tend to overlook it and some have forgotten, Jamey Johnson in part helped lay the foundation for the country music revolution that has taken hold today. He was one of the first to feature producer Dave Cobb and guitarist Jason “Rowdy” Cope of The Steel Woods. He helped guys like Brent Cobb and Shooter Jennings get their foot in the door. And now as an elder statesman with gray hair, a gray beard, Johnson has returned to contributing original material as a torchbearer of traditional country.

14 years didn’t render Jamey Johnson forgotten in the country music sphere. Not dissimilar to the return of the Turnpike Troubadours, Cross Canadian Ragweed, and Sturgill Simpson as Johnny Blue Skies, Jamey Johnson’s re-emergence is triumphant, exceedingly welcome and warmly received, and arguably worth the wait, however elongated, with the favorable results of Midnight Gasoline. (read review)

Kaitlin Butts – Roadrunner!


Uninterested in taking a conventional approach to making an album, rising country star Kaitlin Butts finds inspiration in the original Rodgers and Hammerstein stage production about her native state of Oklahoma to release a conceptualized work that is as epic, involved, entertaining, and thought-provoking upon the interpersonal relationships of men and women as the original award-winning play. But don’t be afraid that theatrics dominate the experience. Overall, this thing is country.

It’s the deep exploration of the dichotomy of love that makes Roadrunner! so compelling—how the same passion that can make someone almost blindly devotional to a lover comes from the same place that can inspire a grizzly crime of passion. When it comes to relationships, love and hate aren’t the exact opposite sides of the spectrum. They are two sides of the same coin, and can flip on a dime. We see this through the stories and characters Kaitlin Butts creates.

Even after repeated listens, Roadrunner! leaves the listener fulfilled, but perhaps with many lingering questions. The fate of multiple characters seems to remain unresolved, and how one song relates to another isn’t always easy to deduce. But perhaps that’s the point, to leave the audience with more clues to unravel, and convey the overall messiness of human emotion that can make us give of our lives almost completely to another, or sadly, take life when we feel so scorned that we somehow rationalize no other recourse. (read review)

Johnny Blue Skies (Sturgill Simpson) – Passage Du Desir


Passage Du Desir is an inspired, omnivorous work that is sometimes country, sometimes genre-less, often rock and roll, and more soundscape than singer/songwriter. It’s sometimes self-indulgent, but is mostly an enrapturing and riveting work that in part seems to explore the timeline of a relationship, from the founding of it amid a lost abyss, to its final expiration with the emotion best expressed in a guitar solo, and the seasons in between.

Untethered by genre, Simpson is able to explore ideas both lyrically and sonically wherever they take him on the album, which he takes full advantage of on numerous tracks. But as he says in the 7 minute “Jupiter’s Faerie,” “There’s no happy endings, only stories that stop before they’re through…” Similarly, Passage Du Desir seems to revel less in answering questions as it does in asking them, and seems to be okay, if not intended, to leave some of those questions unresolved.

Passage Du Desir is perhaps not the masterpiece some people will decree it as after a first listen. But the hype and excitement isn’t entirely unwarranted. The immersive experience and the inspired moments make for one of those complex musical journeys true music lovers enjoy to embark on, and it fulfills expectations that are so often left unrequited in today’s musical landscape. (read review)

Billy Strings – Highway Prayers


Traditionalists in bluegrass will lose their marbles over this assertion, but Billy Strings is perhaps the most important bluegrass player since Bill Monroe, or certainly Flatt & Scruggs. He’s taken the music to the arena and beyond. And every time you believe he’s going to abandon the discipline or stretch it too far, he doubles down on his bluegrass roots like he does with Highway Prayers.

If you’re a Billy Strings bluegrass fan first and simply tolerate all the jam band stuff, Highway Prayers doesn’t meet your expectations, if far exceeds them. In many respects, the approach to this new album makes perfect sense. Heretofore, Strings has struggled to capture the frenetic energy and and freak spontaneity of his live shows in the studio, and has admitted as much publicly. He’s a live artist first and foremost. So instead of struggling to try and bottle those live moments, just do what you know you do well in the studio.

It’s the age of Billy Strings in bluegrass, and the world is better off for it. (read review)

Silverada – Self-Titled

Is the Silverada album indicative of the sound and approach that made you fall in love with the old Mike and the Moonpies? Yes it is. Is it country? Of course. Is it of the superior and righteous quality of the band’s previous albums that had you swearing to all your buddies this was the best frikin’ band on the planet and it was stupid they weren’t selling out arenas? Absolutely.

Ultimately it doesn’t matter what you call them. Silverada—the band and the album—is great music. And whether they’re properly recognized in their time or otherwise, they have put together an important catalog of American country music that will withstand name changes, stylistic shifts in popular culture, and rigorous the test of time. (read review)

49 Winchester – Leavin’ This Holler

Life can sometimes be a pill. Music helps. If you’re looking for that one album that can allow you to lose yourself in Appalachian music bliss driven home by some of the most soulful lyrics around, 49 Winchester and Leavin’ This Holler is beckoning. This band of dudes out of Russell County, Virginia have tapped into a mother lode vein of righteous music, and it is far from running out. If anything, they’re hitting their stride right here, right now with this new album, and you love to hear it.

On Leavin’ This Holler, 49 Winchester resist messing with the recipe that has gotten them here so far. Working once again with producer Stewart Myers, they lean into their strengths, and worry about delivering great songs as opposed to shaking things up for some indefinable idea of “artistry” like some bands do once they reach their fifth album. 49 Winchester just keeps refining what they do best. (read review)

Honorable Mention / Most Essential Album Nominees

With so many excellent albums being released, it’s always difficult to know where to draw the line at what is the “top” of the year, especially when you have so many albums sitting right on the bubble. That is why at the very end of the year, Saving Country Music will publish an “Essential Albums List,” and crowning that list will be the “Most Essential” albums that were inches away from becoming Album of the Year nominees. In 2024, these “Most Essential” albums will include (but might not be limited to):

Pat Reedy – Make It Back Home
George Dearborne – Lotta Honky Tonkin’ Left In Me
J.P. Harris – J.P. Harris is a Trash Fire
Shawna Thompson – Lean On Neon
Pony Bradshaw – Thus Spoke The Fool
John Moreland – Visitor
Jesse Daniel – Countin’ The Miles
Zach Top – Cold Beer and Country Music
Joe Stamm – Allegheny EP

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Editor’s Note: Due to large vote shares, Silverada’s self-titled album and 49 Winchester’s ‘Leavin’ This Holler’ have been added as official Album of the Year nominees.

© 2025 Saving Country Music

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