“The Mirror” is a Trisha Yearwood album. It’s an album that feels inspired, passionate, and purposeful. It’s the best album Trisha Yearwood could make in this season of her career.
What about the toe tappers, the booty shakers, and the boot scooters? That’s what the best SINGLE distinction is for. They can be great “songs” too. But these are the tracks that get stuck in your head.
We’ve run down the Best Country Albums of 2025 So Far, now it’s time to consider the best songs. What we’re looking for here are legitimate Song of the Year contenders, not catchy ditties or toe tappers.
Hailey Whitters makes for one of the most navigable bridges between the independent and mainstream, and the classic and contemporary. She offers something entertaining and enlightening to just about everyone.
No rest for independent country music fans in the second half of 2025. Some excellent country music projects will be coming at you, and this is your updating guide too get you through it all.
Nobody panic. But we have a situation where it’s necessary to interrupt the regularly scheduled programming and the typical rhythms of Saving Country Music to offer an EMERGENCY update to the Top 25 Playlist.
Hailey Whitters has been one of the brights spots in mainstream country for some years now, with plenty of fans in independent and traditional country circles also digging on her music.
The Saving Country Music Top 25 Playlist is built to keep you informed on all the best songs and albums coming out right here, right now in country and roots music. It’s available on most all streaming formats.
Instead of exploiting a moment when Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn still have tread left on the tires to give it another shot with original songs, we get a second installment in their Reboot series.
In a true procrastinator’s fashion, I have waited until the final dying moments of the year to tackle 2023’s most difficult album to review, and the one that will include some of the most dissenting viewpoints from prevailing sentiments.
Make no mistake about it. Jelly Roll is not a country artist. The music he makes is not country music, with some minor exceptions. And not to be pedantic or arrogant about it, but this is pretty inarguable.
Before Turnpike went on indefinite hiatus in 2019, they were doing quite well for many independent acts, but were also meandering along in the effort to really spark national attention for themselves. Now the game has completely changed.
Unique, edgy, and original, with a visual component to his music via the moody and imaginative videos that accompany his releases, Stephen Wilson Jr. is like no other artist you’ve seen before.
Everybody calm down. It’s just the ACM Awards. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t celebrate that the good guys won.
One of the hottest up-and-coming artists in all of country music is now signed to the roster of one of the hottest labels in all of country music. Announced Wednesday afternoon (3-29), West Virginia native Charles Wesley Godwin has signed to Big Loud Records, which is the home of Morgan Wallen.
Eric Church is a fan of country music’s “Outsiders” if you will. That is why for his “Outsiders Revival” tour, Church will be reviving the practice of featuring some of the cooler folks in country music as opposed to whatever boilerplate star the industry is trying to shove down the public’s throats at the moment.
Every year to make sure the best titles in mainstream country don’t get overlooked, and to encourage the quality in the mainstream to rise to the top, we run down the best mainstream country albums to compliment the Album of the Year nominees. Some years there is overlap.
Here is the 2022 Saving Country Music Christmas Playlist. It is country. It is good. It is all new recordings of both classics and original songs released in 2022, delicately curated to remove anything that is too syrupy, too pop, or not cool. All the songs have been expertly arranged to be listened to consecutively.
Finally. 14+ years into a 10 year town, and Hailey Whitters is receiving the attention from the mainstream of country music that many fans, critics, and prognosticators have been saying she deserved many years ago, wishcasting her as one of the future bright stars of the genre if she was just given a chance.
Hailey Whitters proves on ‘Raised’ that eulogizing small town middle America doesn’t have to be so trite. Whitters and her co-writers like Lori McKenna, Brandy Clark, and Nicolle Galyon know how to take the yearning we all feel for a sense of home…
Hailey Whitters is a really important artist to this whole thing. With Americana-level writing chops and a traditional-leaning sound, yet mainstream-level appeal and acceptance, she’s vital to the effort to save country music. She illustrated this with her last album ‘The Dream.’
If 90% of mainstream country music is bad, then it stands to reason that 10% of it must be good, or at least decent. So under the philosophy of celebrating what stands out in hopes it sustains, the idea that mainstream country fans deserve good music too, and to not be independent music music snobs […]
New for 2021 are the Single of the Year nominees, which are songs whose primary litmus test is simply the enjoyment they convey. The Single of the Year are more well-rounded offerings that have proven infectiousness.
If you need an illustration to help put into perspective how the shifting dynamics in entertainment are causing a tectonic-level reorganization of media, and how this is all weighing upon already deepening trends in country music, this might be one of the best.