The Saving Country Music 2025 Album of the Year

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To see all of the nominees for Album of the Year, CLICK HERE.

#3 Colter Wall – Memories and Empties

The reason Colter Wall has become so wildly successful with Western music is because he doesn’t just play the music, he champions it. He embraces it. He sells its virtues to the audience. That’s what Colter does for traditional country songs on Memories and Empties. Like we’ve seen from other artists lately, this album is Colter Wall proclaiming “THIS is country music.”

Colter Wall promised us a classic country record and a love letter to the genre, and that’s exactly what he delivered with Memories and Empties. (read review)

#2 Sunny Sweeney – Rhinestone Requiem

Pour this out over rocks or take it straight. Find some skins and roll it up. Crush it and line it up on the back of a CD case. Cook it up in a spoon and load it up in a needle. However you take it, go hard into Sunny Sweeney’s Rhinestone Requiem, and forgo the moderation. It just might cause you to suffer a honky tonk relapse. But it’s so worth it.

You could regard Sunny Sweeney as a veteran of the game. But listening through Rhinestone Requiem, the boldness of its audio flavors, and the passion brought to the songwriting, it gives you a sense that her career is just now in its peak. She’s making some of the most compelling country music of her life, and songs that will withstand the test of time because classic country like this is timeless.

In most any other year, Rhinestone Requiem would have been strong enough to be the Album of the Year. In 2026, there just happened to be one more stronger. (read review)

2025 Saving Country Music Album of the Year
The Turnpike Troubadours – The Price of Admission


Some years, the opinions are all over the place about who truly had the “Album of the Year” from the perspective of true country music. Sometimes, the ultimate pick is polarizing for one reason or another, including because no consensus could be come to.

And then every once in a while, the Album of the Year pick is so self-evident, it nears what passes for universal consensus these days in a fractured and frenetic moment in life and music. Of course, not everyone will agree. But even those who disagree can see the meritorious inevitability in the decision. This is one of those consensus years, with the only obvious pick for Album of the Year being The Price of Admission by the Turnpike Troubadours.

It’s rare that an artist or band delivers a landmark, career-defining record approaching 20 years into their tenure, and 15 years since they did so the first time (2010’s Diamonds & Gasoline). But this isn’t the Turnpike Troubadours of 2010, or 2017, or even 2021 when they reconnoitered after their hiatus with new hope for the future.

With frontman, singer, and primary songwriter Evan Felker as dialed in and focused as ever, he’s just now hitting his peak, or possibly a long stride. We might be staring at years ahead of landmark songs that will go on to define the very pinnacle of possibilities of where songs we consider “country” can take you.

It’s two songs in “On The Red River” and “Heaven Passing Through” from The Price of Admission that have folks raving the most. Either of these songs could constitute a career-defining or career-making moment for any other performer. It just happens to be that this album has two of them, and they still must compete with the other incredible songs from the Turnpike Troubadours catalog as all-time favorites.


It’s not just the way Evan Felker writes a song to stoke the imagination, to allow memories to swell to the forefront of thought, and to stir the most potent of emotions. It’s the way these musical expressions feel so indelible to the audience. These songs weave themselves into the very fabric of your life. They’re what plays in the background as you recall those most meaningful events of the past year, from the birth of a child, to the death of a parent, to the purchase of a house, to the loss of a job.

This isn’t just “music.” It’s moments captured in time. It’s often the manna one uses to carry on. But as music, The Price of Admission is also a superior specimen. The Turnpike Troubadours have always been a supergroup that happened to come together as a singular, original unit. It also happens to be that The Price of Admission is their most traditional country effort in the band’s career.

The Price of Admission is incredibly consistent throughout, with the songwriting contributions from bassist RC Edwards and co-writer Lance Roark (“Ruby Ann”), and fiddle player Kyle Nix (“Nothing You Can Do”) also lending to the power of the effort. Perhaps the instrumental performances from guitarist Ryan Englemen, and steel guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Hank Early have never been more potent, or the backing vocals from drummer Gabriel Pearson more vital to the moments.

Co-writers John Fullbright and Ketch Secor also deserve credit, as does Shooter Jennings, who has now proven to have taken his producer game to the very elite level. As one of the very first to utilize Dave Cobb as a producer, Shooter has now taken that tutelage, and rivaled or surpassed his old master.

But all this glazing of individual efforts runs the risk of still not communicating or quantifying what all these contributors did as a whole. Even classifying this as “music” seems inferior to what people experience through Turnpike Troubadours songs. It’s not music; it’s the magic of meaningful moments rendered in audio form that makes life worth living, and worthy of dying for.

They’re not a band. They’re the Turnpike Troubadours. The Price of Admission is not just an album. It’s the Album of the Year, and one for the ages.

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Stream or purchase The Price of Admission

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