Where to begin?
That’s the question I’ve found myself asking repeatedly throughout 2025, every time I’ve tried to make sense of some new atrocity or grotesque new development, whether drawn from the world at large or from the realm of country music.
We’ve brought back the R-slur? Where even to begin with that?
Someone let Megan Moroney sing live again? How does this keep happening?
The bullets were inscribed with a furry meme? What?
My mother is sending Jesse Welles videos in a family group text? What kind of fresh hell is this?
I say that not to make light of actual injustices or to draw any kind of false equivalences. Instead, it’s a matter of finding myself, now in my mid-40s and a full 20 years into writing published criticism, struggling to make sense of it all when it just hits different. 2025 was a year without a single overarching theme– reactionary “Try That In A Small Town” grievances and Know Your Place Aggression were still there, for sure, and the tree that was already on fire was still fully ablaze. But there wasn’t a clear throughline to latch onto to tie it all together in a neat package, so where to begin?
Then, last week, the brilliant tech journalist Sarah Jeong published a reflection on the year’s political violence that distilled this inability to make sense of it all. Writing for The Verge, Jeong noted:
“You do not bring a persuasive argument to a gunfight.”
Indeed, the need to bring some kind of rhetorical clarity to the past year in country music is futile, and Jeong’s statement captured for me why that’s the case. Culturally, there has been a vocal movement to vilify the very concept of empathy, which has long been what we’ve championed here as the foundation for the finest and most important country music. And many of the genre’s biggest mainstream acts– and not just a subset of past-their-prime artists looking to cash in on a grift, as we’ve seen in past years– have spent the year aligning themselves with the political class who’ve made those very arguments.
The “& Western” part of the genre is steeped in the iconography of gunfights and outlaws, so the metaphor sticks its landing in this case. And there’s a grim logic to approaching an attack on empathy– on the value of finding connection in shared experiences and a belief that humans are better, together, in every way that matters– as an act of violence.
As I alluded to in my A Separate Peace essay earlier this year, I recognize that there’s not a persuasive argument that will dissuade anyone from embracing Morgan Wallen’s petulant, unapologetic crusade against personal growth. Hell, tastemakers like Pitchfork and The New York Times have cited his offerings as the best country music of 2025. Nor is there a rational counterargument to the boorishness of professional shitposter Gavin Adcock or to the tradwife-coded personae of Lauren Watkins or Emily Ann Roberts. Those who’ve decided to make A-listers out of minimal talents like Moroney and Bailey Zimmerman aren’t going to rethink those decisions based on an analysis of how the southern collegiate Greek system they personify exists to uphold white supremacy and the elite class.
These are but attempts at bringing a persuasive argument to a gunfight.
So the mission for 2026 is two-fold. It’s essential to continue to maintain a finely-tuned bullshit detector to be able to name things for what they are with accuracy and reliability, and to do so without regard for whether that makes people uncomfortable. Over the last year, for instance, nothing has brought us more negativity on social media than pointing out that Jesse Welles is not the second coming of Woody Guthrie and is, instead, South Park with an aughts hipster haircut.
More important, though, is that we continue to highlight the ways that country music is not and has never been a monolith, no matter how tightly Music Row might be attempting to circle its wagons. And that, in doing so, we soundly reject the notion that empathy is somehow a sign of weakness. Despite what the Wallen and Moroney apologists might think, the best country music of 2025 leaned hard into empathy as the basis of profound storytelling, and it did so across doggedly traditional and progressive takes on the genre’s form.
Our 2025 best-of, then, isn’t about persuasive arguments: It’s about showcasing exactly how much ammunition is available for the fight ahead. It’s where to begin for 2026. Saddle up, y’all.
Best of 2025
Top 10 Albums
Albums 11 – 40 (And Then Some)
Top 10 Singles
Singles 11 – 40
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