Why The Turnpike Troubadours Were Overlooked for the Grammys

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Every once in a while, an album comes along that finds an uncommon consensus about its brilliance and importance in the musical landscape. As culture at large and people’s news feeds become increasingly fractured and sequestered from each other, creating a consensus about anything is becoming less and less common, let alone in something as subjective as music.

But as country and roots fans look back, they regard albums like Jason Isbell’s Southeastern, Sturgill Simpson’s Metamodern Sounds in Country Music, Purgatory by Tyler Childers, and other titles as all-time albums that helped shape the future of the country genre, and set the standard for what a country album could be. But none of these landmark albums won a Grammy Award. Only Metamodern Sounds received a nomination, and that was in Americana.

In 2025, country artists of all stripes had a greater opportunity to earn a nomination for a 2026 Grammy Award after The Recording Academy split the Best Country Album distinction in two: Best Traditional Country Album, and Best Contemporary Country Album. In a previous year, it was probably wishful thinking that any Red Dirt or traditional country artist would receive a nomination in any Grammy category.

But this year, it felt like Oklahoma’s Turnpike Troubadours were poised for a nomination due to their landmark, career-level album The Price of Admission, especially with the new Best Traditional Country Album category opening up such an obvious lane for them, and with a consensus feeling among a wide host of fans, industry, and press that it should be in contention, if not a front-runner.



But just like the Jason Isbell, Sturgill Simpson, and Tyler Childers titles of the past, The Price of Admission was passed over. In fairness to Grammy voters, they commonly make up for past mistakes. Jason Isbell has gone on to become almost a shoo-in for nominations and awards in the Grammy’s American Roots categories. Sturgill Simpson’s subsequent album A Sailor’s Guide to Earth won Best Country Album, and was nominated for the all-genre Album of the Year. Tyler Childers has yet to win a Grammy, but has been nominated for 11 of them, and ties for the lead in country this year with four.

Perhaps all the noise about how the Turnpike Troubadours got snubbed will increase their exposure with Grammy voters, and they’ll get a do-over with their next album. But that defeats the purpose of someone being able to go down a list of Grammy nominees and winners from the past, and see what the best of a given year was. It’s also unfair to performers in subsequent years if voters feel the need to make up for a previous year’s mistake.

Let’s not present that the Grammys as always getting it wrong, or always a year behind. In 2025, Sierra Ferrell walked away with four Grammy Awards in the American Roots categories from her album Trail of Flowers, and all seemed right in the world. Chris Stapleton’s landmark album Traveller should have won for Best Country Album in 2016, and did.

There is also little to complain about the ultimate nominees for the inaugural Best Traditional Country Album beyond the Turnpike Troubadours exclusion. Of course everyone’s opinions differ. Some thought Sunny Sweeney should finally get some recognition as a long-time country music traditionalist that has been criminally overlooked by the industry, and released a landmark album in Rhinestone Requiem. Others though Kelsea Waldon’s Every Ghost deserved to be a nominee.

And for all we know, if there was a sixth nominee, it would have been the Turnpike Troubadours. Maybe they came up just a few votes short. The finite nature of awards and nominations is what makes them so special.

But Charley Crockett’s Dollar A Day felt like a career effort from the prolific country artist, so did Margo Price’s Hard Headed Woman. Zach Top might be more responsible than anyone for the resurgence of interest in traditional country, so his album Ain’t In It For My Health felt like a shoo-in. The nominations for American Romance by Lukas Nelson, and Oh What A Beautiful World by Willie Nelson were perhaps more based on name recognition than anything, but are hard to complain too loudly about either.


And looking at the demographic makeup of these nominees, this is what you want to see. There is a woman represented. There’s an old country legend in Willie Nelso. Charley Crockett helps represent a minority interest in country music, even if how Black Crockett might be is a convoluted topic. And it was important that “traditional” and “contemporary” weren’t just code words for “independent” and “mainstream.” Zach Top’s nomination ensures that, as does the nomination for Tyler Childers in the Contemporary Country Album category.

But what is it about the Grammy system that doesn’t allow that one consensus album of a given year to rise to the top like it should, like it didn’t for the Turnpike Troubadours in 2025? After all, it’s received nothing but praise in the press. Billboard mentioned it in their predictions for the Grammy categories. Rolling Stone had it in their predictions for the five nominees, and even said it should win.



The answer might be the same as to why there are no country artists represented in the “Big Four” of the Grammy Awards, meaning Album of the Year, Song of the Year, Record of the Year, and New Artist of the Year. It’s also the reason why widespread name recognition appears to reign supreme over everything else in the Grammy process: The Grammy voting body just doesn’t include a lot of voters knowledgeable about country music.

In a Billboard article written by Melinda Newman called “Country Continues To Be The Grammys’ Poor Relation,” it’s explained point blank, “Only 7% of Grammy voters come from the country genre, according to the Recording Academy (compared to 24% for pop and 16% for jazz). It’s clear among the winners and nominees that many of them, such as Beyoncé and Shaboozey, had projects with crossover appeal, which likely garnered them votes from beyond the country community.”

But it gets even worse from there. As the Billboard article explains, “Unlike other genres, such as rap and alternative, country often still remains its own island and doesn’t always cross over with other genres … but there still seems to be a bigger divide: country listeners (including voters) likely listen to other genres of music, while fans of other genres don’t necessarily listen to country.”

The Grammy Awards are unique since it’s a peer-voted award, meaning you have to be a musician, performer, songwriter, producer, or engineer to vote, unlike the CMA and ACM Awards that let industry people also participate in voting. But clearly, the responsibility of picking nominees and winners is being put on a population that is just not aware enough of country music to make smart, informed decisions for the country categories.

This is why you keep seeing name recognition getting picked over merit, and similar names get picked each year. People from outside of country recognize these names, and pull the lever for them. This also gives outsized influence to artists that cross over from other genres. In this environment, a band like the Turnpike Troubadours is put at a significant disadvantage.

What could be done to tilt the weight of influence towards country music so the Grammy Awards could get it right more often? The most obvious answer is to add more country artists and contributors to the ranks of voting Grammy members. As the Billboard article goes on to say, “The Recording Academy is well aware of the country lag, and even added a new country category this year, Best Traditional Country Album.” So adding the new category was in part to address this known issue.

But at the same time, the Grammys are adding a massive amount of new members overall. And this isn’t helping the Grammy’s country dilemma. It’s exacerbating it.

“The Recording Academy has been on a massive drive over the last several years to diversify its ranks especially among women, younger voters and people of color, adding 2,900 new voting members this year alone,” Melinda Newman reports. “Total voting membership is now approaching 15,000, with 73% joining since the Academy introduced a new membership model in 2019. Tellingly, only 1% of this year’s new voting members identified as being most aligned with the country genre.“

From club-level independent artists all the way up to mainstream stadium headliners, many country artists and their fans feel alienated in the Grammy process.

The biggest artist in all of country music at the moment is Morgan Wallen. Right now Wallen has the top three albums in the country genre. Morgan Wallen publicly recused himself from being considered for the Grammy Awards this year. If there was any artist that might have been considered for one of the big all-genre awards, it might have been Wallen. But he felt so alienated from the process, he didn’t even participate. Zach Bryan also refused to participate in the Grammy process last year.

One radical idea to address the Grammy’s lack of country knowledge in voters might be to only let country-oriented Grammy members vote on the country awards. But this still doesn’t solve the lack of representation for country in the all-genre categories. In the last decade, only five country projects have received Album of the Year nominations out of 74 contenders, and only two have won: Golden Hour by Kacey Musgraves, and Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, which many country fans would not consider country.

Reaching out to more members of the country music community through the new Best Traditional Country Album category was a good idea. But ironically, not including Turnpike’s The Price of Admission in the nominations soured the well with some in the very community the Grammys were trying to appeal to. If The Price of Admission had been nominated, it might have codified that independent/Texas/Red Dirt country support.

The Turnpike Troubadours don’t need the Grammy Awards. The Grammy Awards need bands like the Turnpike Troubadours, and albums like The Price of Admission and other universal consensus picks to not just help them represent the best in country music, but to make sure they’re representing the country music community and their interests through their awards show process.

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