The Best Country Songs of 2025 So Far

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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. This means were not searching for the catchy ditties and toe tappers. We’re looking for songs that elicit a deep emotional response. These are songs that can change a life, change the world, or change someone’s perspective.

This high bar always creates some misunderstanding and always tends to favor slower and more somber songs, but the “Singles of the Year” will also be given their due at some point. With songs, the idea of what is “good” is even more subjective than with albums. So if there is a song that you had a very deep emotional connection with not included here, by all means, share it below.

Turnpike Troubadours – “On The Red River”

There’s no warm up with the new Turnpike Troubadours album The Price of Admission. Evan Felker aims straight at your ventricles, and offers up perhaps the album’s most emotional and poetic moment with the opening song.

It’s been said before that it’s the hunting songs of the Turnpike Troubadours where they make the deepest impact, with previous songs “The Bird Hunters” and “The Rut” being State’s evidence #1 and #2. But really these aren’t hunting songs at all. They’re about the strength of family bonds, and how the rhythms of life like the onset of hunting season allow the realizations of these bonds to rise to the front of consciousness.

Tony Logue – “Yellow Rose”

Tony Logue is a songwriter, but he’s not really interested in poetic eloquence. And to be honest, he may not be blessed with this gift even if he wanted to be. His words come out in the grind and hustle, with no mincing or mealy-mouthed delivery to the sentiments. But that doesn’t mean that his songs aren’t creative or imaginative.

A perfect example is the song “Yellow Rose” about a stripper working to provide for her family, and her anxiety-filled husband. This is the kind of real-world storytelling that separates Tony Logue from the herd of country cosplay and rehashed ideas. Similar to Chris Knight, it’s the plainspoken, unpretentious nature undergirding everyday wisdom that makes Tony Logue songs so compelling.

Nikki Lane – “Woodruff City Limit”

There’s little fond recollection found in “Woodruff City Limit.” Instead, the verses find Nikki Lane reckoning with formidable memories that come flooding forth from repressed recesses after her father’s death. Though ultimately, Lane finds a solemn sweetness in all of the pain—if only from the Gibson guitar her father gave her, and understanding that pain was the catalyst for her father’s anger.

It’s often the greatest songs that are not written for an audience, but for the artist themselves to process through their emotions. It just happens to be that the rest of us can listen in, and often use great songs to help us process through grief of our own, or find a level of solace previously unattainable ourselves. “Woodruff City Limit” is one of those great songs.

Josh Ward – “Talkin’ To Your Picture On The Wall”

Writers: David Lindsey, Lee Bach

Sometimes the greatest song isn’t one that must delve into complex poetic eloquence, or speak deeply about some political subject. It’s actually its plainspoken nature that makes it so endearing, yet no less prophetic in how it characterizes a common occurrence, like the feeling of heartbreak. That is the beauty behind the simplicity of country music.

This is captured perfectly in the song “Talkin To Your Picture On The Wall,” performed and recorded by Josh Ward for his 2025 album Same Ol’ Cowboy, Different Rodeo, and written by David Lindsey and Lee Bach. It’s just a great country music song.

Hailey Whitters – “Casseroles”

Writers: Hillary Lindsey, James Slater, Tom Douglas

Death is a common, if not an easy topic to broach in a song that you want to score an emotional wallop. But taking the custom of dishing out casseroles to the bereaved, and using it to explore how perfunctory this practice can be when your actions don’t go beyond sourcing recipes on Pinterest, is a master stroke of songwriting.

Great country songs often know how to take little artifacts of American Life like the funeral casserole, it makes you rethink how you approach your relationships with friends and loved ones not just around moments of death, but 365 days a year. The way Hailey Whitters poured her heart into this song made a great song even better. It’s from her album Corn Queen.

Turnpike Troubadours – “Heaven Passing Through”

With exquisite writing by Evan Felker, and a deep-sinking lyrical hook bolstering the chorus, “Heaven Passing Through” is definitely a candidate for the best song on the new Turnpike Troubadours record, The Price of Admission.

There’s a lot of specificity to the verses to this song that seem to speak to a deeper story or parallel narrative, like the reference to working a late shift at the nursing home, or washing X’s off your hands. But “Heaven Passing Through” might just be a song about gratefulness and the beauty of moments that employs a multi-generational perspective to its timeline. Either way, it’s a great song, and one that proves that great songs can also come with an infectiousness and immediacy, and don’t always have to go down like a bitter pill.

Olivia Ellen Lloyd – “Live With It”

The idea that whatever we might be suffering from in life—whether physical pain or emotional trauma—might be worse than life itself—is a cold sentiment that also rings incredibly true when it comes to some of the most unforgiving and hopeless moments. Luckily, there are songs like “Live With It” that confer a level of solace in these moments, stir the emotions of life, and no matter how deep the level of sorrow, remind us why living is always the better option.

Yes, the fiddle finds the sweetest accents of the melody of the song, making the listening experience extra moving. But it’s the heartbreaking little vignettes found in the verses that submerge you in a sweet, yet sorrow-filled mood over the existential crises the characters endure, how they remind you of your own little catastrophes that can emerge on a daily basis, and how you can overcome.

The Castellows – “Broke”

Writers: The Castellows and Erik Dylan

Choosing to write a coal song, including one that involves tragedy, is not entirely novel in country. But to do so in a way that not only avoids feeling tired, but that brings the emotion of a story to the surface is no easy task. Though coal country is the backdrop, this is really a song about love and commitment that is smart and how it avoids certain details to let the listeners imagination fill in the most important moments. You still looking for organization

There are probably stronger songs on this list. But it’s a song like “Broke” that helps emphasize that the Castellows are not attempting to ride pretty faces and Tik-Tok poses to stardom. They take the art of songwriting incredibly seriously, and see the attention they’ve received as an opportunity present younger audiences with songs of meaning, and that tap into traditional country’s timeless themes.

Honorable Mention:

Juliet McConkey – Another Time and Place

Sam Stoane – “Pretty Poppies”

Caitlin Cannon – “Waiting”

Reese Glover – “Time and Time Again”

John Mutchler – “Young Man’s Lament”

Cam Pierce – “The World Is Cold”


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