Best of 2025
The 40 Best Albums of 2025
It’s been another banner year throughout the Country Universe!
We’ve compiled a list of the year’s best singles, starting with our Single of the Year, and followed by the Rest of the Top Ten and Top Forty Singles of the Year, listed alphabetically by artist.
The Best Single of 2025
“Eatin’ Big Time”
Tyler Childers
Written by Tyler Childers
During a prior economic downturn, Todd Snider dropped one of his most shrewdly observed tracks, a dirty little contemporary blues number called “In Between Jobs.” That song ends with the narrator looking at someone in a better financial state and observing, “I know how mad I’m gettin’ just knowing how much more you’ve got than me / I’m thinkin’ what’s keeping me from killin’ this guy, takin’ his shit / Can ya dig it?” If there was an element of wish fulfillment fantasy to it, Snider’s wiseass persona won out and left the song’s threat hanging.
Tyler Childers chose to meet this exact moment by dialing up both the humor and the menace of that Snider track much farther than anyone with any kind of sense ought to. Because “Eatin’ Big Time” applies Childers’ mastery of Holler vernacular and rural underclass lifestyle to a narrative about literally eating the rich.
Can ya dig it?
In 2025, no other track captured the peculiarity of our larger cultural rot with the same precision. Some have high-horsed about Childers’ profanity on “Eatin’ Big Time,” as if the largesse of the ruling oligarch class and their contempt for the rest of us isn’t what’s really and truly obscene. “Have you ever got to hold and blow a thousand fucking dollars?” Childers barks in the middle of a verse about pillaging a fancy Weiss timepiece off his hunting party’s latest trophy, emphasizing the absurdity of what he’s found. “Yer goddamn right I’m flexin’,” he boasts. “A thousand dollar watch is fine enough a flex for me.”
In terms of performance, Childers is at his very best on this one, with his inimitable phrasing allowing him to fully inhabit the character of a man who is taking real joy from having stumbled upon a solution for providing for his family. “Mama, I been out there huntin’ / Imma need you to make a plate,” he sings at the end of a particularly long day, knowing that his efforts will be met with gratitude. And he’s happy to spread the wealth: “Eatin’ big time is a feelin’ with the friends that I have made.”
And “Eatin’ Big Time” is a feeling and a vibe. If I’m still not sold on Snipe Hunter as a whole, this single lets Childers and the friends he’s made get real weird with it in ways that play to his formidable gifts. – Jonathan Keefe
The Rest of the Top Ten Singles of 2025
“Going Blonde”
Tanner Adell
Written by Tanner Adell and Di Genius
Leaning hard into country music as three chords and the truth, Tanner Adell’s stunner of a single unpacks multiple layers of grief as she mourns both the mother she never knew and her idealized childhood image of her, too. That she clings to the imagined version to process her feelings speaks volumes on childhood trauma, but also childhood resilience.
Still, the grief remains palpable. It’s often surprising to those who could take a loving and present parent for granted, but those who are estranged from their parents, never knew them, or just never get what they need from them? They never give up hope on that wound being healed, until death closes the door for good. It’s a bitter grief, one devoid of the balm that comes with a life well loved. – Kevin John Coyne
“Flashlights in the Canyon”
Briscoe
Written by Phillip Lupton
A song that stopped me cold the first time I heard it, “Flashlights in the Canyon” takes the political abstraction of the “border crisis” and humanizes it in urgent terms. To hear two white guys from west Texas, operating in the country music space in 2025, sing about this topic at all is astonishing. That they do so by trading first-person POVs between a rancher who lives near the border and a Latina woman seeking help as she goes into labor is simply without precedent. Compared to the preposterous White Knight fantasy of “Wait In The Truck,” this is a song with very real stakes and actually prioritizes the experience of the woman at the center of the narrative instead of congratulating a would-be savior. – Jonathan Keefe
“Backseat Driver”
Kane Brown
Written by Jacob Davis and Jordan Walker
The best girl dad song in country music history, and it’s no surprise that it comes from Kane Brown, who is the embodiment of all of the country music traditions that truly matter and are increasingly lost to time. This is the kind of song that Conway Twitty or George Strait would’ve made a classic in an earlier generation, two artists who have some excellent boy dad classics under their belts.
Brown’s depth and nuance as a vocalist further heighten the impact of this celebration of fatherhood, and it’s because he understands his role and what a privilege that role is. He’s responsible for raising a girl in a world that will try to silence her voice. Having the first man in her life truly listen to her and take her inquiries seriously armors her against what awaits her down the road.
Another highwater mark from a generational talent. – Kevin John Coyne
“The Middle”
Kaitlin Butts
Written by James Adkins, Rick Burch, Tom Linton, and Zachary Lind
A great cover reveals new layers of a record that you already loved, and makes you appreciate the original all over again because of it.
Butts does an incredible job reinventing “The Middle” for an older, wearier audience. The adolescent urgency of the original was a clarion call for not giving in to peer pressure and forming your own identity in those critical years.
The Butts cover feels like a salve in my mid-forties, a quiet reminder to not give into an increasingly cruel world and hold on to the kindness and empathy that I need to shine a little light in the darkness. – Kevin John Coyne
“Bootstraps”
Crowe Boys
Written by Ocie Crowe
The resurgence of the Stomp Clap Hey aesthetic in 2024 and 2025 is not something I’ve found welcome in every instance. But every second of Crowe Boys’ “Bootstraps” sounds like it’s trying to break free from a restraint, with shifts in tempo and dynamics that constantly wiggle and kick. It’s a single that feels alive in all the best ways, which is fitting for a song about the Gen Alpha struggle to assert themselves in an increasingly hostile world.
And these kids are more than all right when the arrangement drops out and they proclaim in close-harmony a capella, “Lift yourself up from the bootstraps? Easy to say ‘cause you’ve got bootstraps.” – Jonathan Keefe
“Grudge”
Carter Faith
Written by Tofer Brown, Carter Faith, and Steph Jones
Consider it the Evil Twin to Katie Pruitt’s “White Lies, White Jesus, and You,” in terms of its approach to the emotional labor of forgiveness. Faith proved throughout Cherry Valley that she’s a master of introspection and emotional depth. Here? She’s going for the acme of Petty without apology or hesitation, and with a genuine wit not found on a mainstream country record since Laura Bell Bundy.
Just from a composition standpoint, take this passage: “If I were a good Christian woman like you, I’d probably forgive, but I’m pretty sure that even Jesus thinks that you’re a bitch.” In print, that reads like utterly savage prose, and I cannot think of another contemporary artist with a better command of meter or slant rhyme than Faith, who actually turns those exact lines into what might be the catchiest country bop of 2025. – Jonathan Keefe
“Foolish Heart”
Tami Neilson
Written by Jay Neilson and Tami Neilson
Every Neilson album has at least one track that attempts to harness her full power as a vocalist. I say “attempts” because with each album, said track somehow pushes her past what seemed like a limit reached.
Neilson soars on “Foolish Heart,” with this slice of Americana being a direct homage to peak Patsy Cline. And yes, she can be mentioned in the same breath as Cline, who must’ve “mmm hmmed “ up in heaven when this celestial performance arrived.
How can you not give in to your foolish heart when it sings like this? – Kevin John Coyne
“Dope Boy”
RVSHVD
Written by Micah Carpenter, Cameron, Clintarius Johnson, and Edward McGuire
All respect to the fine enough Zach Top for his ascent to the A-list, but it was RVSHVD who dropped the year’s best 90s country banger. And he did so by capturing the aesthetic and sound of that era without resorting to pastiche or too-easy-to-spot references to specific tracks. The arrangement on “Dope Boy” goes hard, but in a way that it still would’ve stood out as distinctive and of especially high caliber in 1995.
Which makes it all the more subversive that RVSHVD does so with a song that throws one bomb after another at racist stereotypes. It’s the only single of 2025 that might actually be funnier than “Grudge” on a line-for-line basis, and it proves that RVSHVD knows exactly what he’s doing. – Jonathan Keefe
“Devil’s Hands”
Cyndi Thomson
Written by Luke Sheets and Cyndi Thomson
Some of my most treasured memories are listening to Thomson’s debut album on the stretch of road between Nashville, Tennessee and Scottsboro, Alabama.
At the time, it felt like Thomson was the latest in the long string of charismatic and distinctive female singer-songwriters who had come to dominate the genre by the turn of the century. She ended up the canary in the coal mine, exiting early from the Music Row machine that was about to turn on her gender.
“Devil’s Hands” feels like a peek into an alternate timeline where Thomson had a healthy run at radio and is now fully exploring her artistic instincts as a legacy act. And it’s damn good, showcasing her unique vocal style which is now heavy with gravitas.
It’s a dark, earthy record that could hang with the grittiest efforts from Kasey Chambers, and a welcome return from an artist who was gone too soon from the radio. – Kevin John Coyne
The Rest of the Top Forty
Adeem The Artist, “Cowards Together”
The Band Loula, “I Love Leavers”
Willi Carlisle, “We Have Fed You for 1000 Years”
Kasey Chambers & Shane Nicholson, “The Divorce Song”
Kashus Culpepper, “After Me?”
Grey DeLisle, “Sister Shook”
Dylan Earl, “Outlaw Country”
Carter Faith, “Betty”
SG Goodman, “Fire Sign”
Liv Greene, “Flowers (Party Version)”
Jedd Hughes featuring Sarah Buxton, “Stay, Don’t Be Cruel”
I’m With Her, “Ancient Light”
Alison Krauss & Union Station, “Looks Like the End of the Road”
Ella Langley, “Choosin’ Texas”
Roberta Lea, “Papa Was a Rolling Stone”
Don Louis & Sammy Arriaga, “Mine in my Mind”
Adam Mac, “Southern Spectacle”
Miko Marks, “Let the Music Get Down in Your Soul”
Kip Moore, “Flowers in December”
Clayton Mullen, “Love the Way You Lie”
Muscadine Bloodline, “Chickasaw Church of Christ”
Autumn Nicholas featuring SistaStrings, “Listening”
Dolly Parton, “If You Hadn’t Been There”
Joe Stamm Band, “Territory Town”
Sunny Sweeney, “Diamonds & Divorce Decrees”
Turnpike Troubadours, “On the Red River”
Keith Urban, “Straight Line”
Vandoliers, “Life Behind Bars”
Hailey Whitters, “Casseroles”
Olivia Wolf, “Cosmic Appalachian Radio”
Best of 2025
The 40 Best Albums of 2025
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