The 25 Best Country and Americana Albums of 2021

With a few months perspective, it seems clear that Star-Crossed represents for Kacey Musgraves a much-needed statement of (expensive-sounding) transition. But that’s not to say all the songs contained within are transitory. Many of them find the singer using her breakup as a mere staging ground of moving, mixed-up emotion: The lament “Good Wife” offers a darkly existential flip-side to Golden Hour‘s “Lonely Weekend,” while  “There Is a Light” is a revelatory re-awakening set to sublime electro-country, topped off with a thrilling jazz-flute solo by Jim Hoke. While the “saddest divorce album you’ll ever hear” narrative didn’t quite hold water, the interesting moments came when Musgraves tugged at the peculiar position of Texas-strummer-as-pop-star she’s found herself in. As she put it in “Simple Times”: “Wish that I could put this game on pause.” —J.B.

Gary Allan’s first album in eight years sounds…exactly like Gary Allan. And that’s glorious. At 54, the California native’s reedy tenor is fully intact and his song choices are spot-on. “Waste of a Whiskey Drink” would have fit nicely on 2005’s Tough All Over (it’s criminal that it wasn’t a radio hit). “Slide” evokes vintage Allan like “Man to Man.” And the title track is a reminder that few do smoldering love ballads quite like him. But it’s “What I Can’t Talk About,” a salvation-through-song anthem, that is Ruthless’s mission statement. “What I hold in, the music lets out,” Allan sings in a chilling falsetto, proof to the ageists in Nashville that great artists do get better with time. —J.H.

If you listen to just one major-label debut by a dude this year, consider Elvie Shane’s. Stuffed to the gills with 15 songs — all of them co-written by the Kentucky newcomer — Backslider is a country-rock revelation. Shane sneers his way through guitar-rockers like “County Roads” and has bravado to burn in “Love, Cold Beer, Cheap Smoke.” He also shows off a tender side — we dare you not to tear up listening to the stepfather ballad “My Boy.” In “Keep on Strummin’,” he sings, “Nashville bound with my head in the clouds / they say, ‘With hope so high, boy, it’s a long way down.’” But Shane is in no danger of falling here. Like Eric Church’s own superb debut Sinners Like Me, Backslider points to a career that we’re excited to watch unfold. —J.H.

Dan Smyers and Shay Mooney excel at making the kind of melodic, polished pop-country that fits perfectly on radio. Examples on Good Things include the easily digestible hits “Glad You Exist,” “10,000 Hours,” and “Steal My Love.” But take a closer listen and you’ll hear a couple of artisans at work: the single “I Should Probably Go to Bed” comes with a Baroque, Beach Boys-inspired arrangement and some of Mooney’s most jaw-dropping vocal runs. “Lying” weds a soulful “Lean on Me”-style piano (Bill Withers actually gets a songwriting credit) to twinkling mandolin and Dobro as Mooney croons one of those classic country fakeouts: “I don’t love you, I’m not cryin’ / And I swear I’m not lyin’.” The production, overseen by Smyers, is meticulously constructed, with no background harmony, instrumental overdub, or bit of silence ever feeling unconsidered. Listening to Good Things is like slipping on a luxury garment that’s made to flatter every curve. —J.F.

The Nashville singer-songwriter takes the term “roots music” to task in more ways than one on her adventurous, gorgeously rendered third record. Rarely is the phrase applied more literally than on “Magnolia Blues,” the album’s folk-noir opener in which Victoria finds something sacred in the magnolia tree roots of her South Carolina youth. Whether she’s telling a devastating story of addiction and Southern religious hypocrisy (“Whole World Knows”), reinvigorating a century-old Blind Willie McTell song (“You Was Born to Die”), or reclaiming Southern homesickness as a prideful country/folk trope (“South for the Winter”), A Southern Gothic is a rich, generous expansion of Victoria’s profound blues. —J.B.

On their fourth album, Old Dominion staked their claim as country music’s premier craftsmen. Songs like “I Was on a Boat That Day,” “No Hard Feelings,” and “Walk on Whiskey” have melodies that are impossible to shake and an easygoing let’s-day-drink vibe best summed up as “yacht country.” Credit the therapy in the album title, along with band’s escape to Asheville, North Carolina, to write and record the album in seclusion, with focusing their creative energy. Of course, Old D’s previous records all had huge hits, but none of those efforts are as cohesive as this one. “I’ll be drinking my feelings / and beer label peeling and feeling / Alright, alright,” singer Matthew Ramsey scats with abandon in “Drinking My Feelings,” a freewheeling song that only Old Dominion could pull off. —J.H.

For Have a Seat, her first album since tearing up the country music script in 2018 and throwing herself into the spontaneity of jam-rock, Maggie Rose put Nashville even further in the rearview, decamping to Muscle Shoals, Alabama, to record at FAME Studios. The result is a living, breathing album that oozes soul. Nothing is sterilized here: the vocalist and band Them Vibes cut live on the floor, making R&B numbers like “Telephone” and “Best in Me” sound particularly loose. On “What Makes You Tick,” she enlists Marcus King to play Duane Allman to her Aretha. High praise, sure, but it’s as good as any guitarist-belter collab you’ll hear this year. —J.H.

A member of Our Native Daughters, Tennessee native Kiah pivoted to embrace her inner alt-rocker on Wary + Strange, her Rounder Records debut. The songs dealt with a wealth of personal matters from childhood trauma to her experiences as a queer Black woman from the South — never leaving behind Kiah’s acoustic folk and blues roots, but providing them with new context. She repurposed the protest number “Black Myself,” which she originally penned for Our Native Daughters, as a pummeling, in-your-face rock anthem, then got more experimental with off-kilter grunge-blues numbers like “Fancy Drones (Fracture Me)” and “Sleeping Queen.” At the same time, Kiah flexed razor-sharp songwriting muscles on her more folk-oriented tunes, going to battle with her vices in “Hangover Blues” and examining the deep scars left by her mother’s suicide in “Wild Turkey.” “Oh, Lord, will I ever feel right again?” she sings, an unshakable statement in an album full of them. —J.F.

Brandi Carlile’s 2018 album By the Way, I Forgive You cemented her reputation as a first-rate singer-songwriter of uncommon empathy and range. Her 2021 follow-up didn’t try to reinvent the wheel so much as sharpen those already considerable strengths. Carlile’s voice can still pierce right through you, as it does in the chorus of “Right on Time,” but she also projects quiet vulnerability in “Mama Werewolf” and “This Time Tomorrow.” She wears her heroes’ influences proudly, nodding to Elton John in stately piano ballads like “Letter to the Past” and Joni Mitchell in flowing numbers like “You and Me on the Rock,” all of which feature essential contributions from longtime collaborators Tim and Phil Hanseroth. The album’s centerpiece is “Broken Horses,” a blistering rocker in which Carlile wails her way through a tale of vengeance like she’s channeling Robert Plant and Janis Joplin — a thrilling argument that the Washington native truly can do it all. —J.F.

It’s only right that John Prine’s Oh Boy Records put out Emily Scott Robinson’s album American Siren, because the Colorado songwriter has some of the late master’s flair for narrative wit and wisdom. Robinson’s pure, lilting voice is a great vehicle for describing scenes of intense conflict like the biblical temptation that plays out in “If Trouble Comes a Lookin’” or the towering grief left in the wake of an Afghanistan veteran’s suicide in “Hometown Hero.” She offers up solid, homespun advice in “Things You Learn the Hard Way” (“Don’t get married in a church called Mother of Our Sorrows”) and praises the power of dreaming big in “Cheap Seats,” before finding a compatriot who teaches her the “Lost Woman’s Prayer.” Like Prine, Robinson can devastate with a simple description of something ordinary. “The coffee’s hot, the kids asleep,” she sings in “Let ‘Em Burn,” which depicts the unhappy interior life of a married woman: “This is the only time I feel like I can breathe.” —J.F.

The restless Texas song-slinger embraces his status as an old-fashioned balladeer on this collection of sepia-tinged country, roots, and R&B. Following his touching tribute to James Hand, his second album of 2021 offered two-stepping classics (“Are We Lonesome Yet”), lighthearted critiques of Nashville (“Music City USA”), and slow-burning torch ballads that sound like lost late-Sixties Memphis gems (“I Need Your Love”). It’s a superb summation of everything Crockett has done well throughout his prolific past half-dozen years, all crammed into 16 concise tunes. —J.B.

East Nashville singer-songwriter Tasjan went full glam-rock with his enthusiastically self-titled album, a move that simultaneously showed more of his authentic self and how that authentic self is actually pure, glitter-dusted starchild. There’s a burbling, electronic edge to the certified banger “Up All Night,” which mines Jeff Lynne and Tom Petty as he sings about breaking up with a boyfriend for a woman who catches his eye. Spacey flourishes course through the Elliott Smith-evoking “Another Lonely Day,” while “Computer of Love” expresses a creeping anxiety over our constant need for technological stimulation. In the strutting “Feminine Walk,” Tasjan announces his affections for everyone from Grace Jones to Marc Bolan and claims he’s “metropolitan Conway Twitty,” obliterating rigid notions of gender expression in the process. Like the rest of the album, it’s a glorious celebration of fluid sexuality and boundary-pushing rock & roll. —J.F.

The Texas band with the funny name have become perennial entries on our year-end country list. And for good reason: Mike Harmeier and his gang get better with each album. This year marks the Moonpies’ fourth consecutive appearance, thanks to the back-to-the-barroom album One to Grow On. With hard-driving songs like the Johnny Paycheck tribute “Paycheck to Paycheck” and “Hour on the Hour,” the LP is a proper shit-kicker. But it also builds on the intricate sounds and arrangements the band explored on their 2019 orchestral excursion Cheap Silver and Solid Country Gold. Listen to “Brother” and “Whose Side You’re On,” each with a unique wall of sound built by steel player Zach Moulton and Tele-guitarist Catlin Rutherford. —J.H.

Arriving 10 years after her career in country music got started, the Texas singer’s debut succeeded by putting her story as a Black artist in a historically lily-white genre front and center on biographical songs like “Different” and “Love My Hair.” Guyton’s music made her aspirational sense of pride and determination feel universal, as she brought together country, soul, gospel, and rock and sang with a relatability and gravity that felt resolutely common and uniquely her own. It made sense that the most popular track on Remember Her Name was “All American,” the best song 2021 had to offer about celebrating our diverse national character with one shared voice. —J.D.

On Stand for Myself, Yola built on the stylistic range of 2019’s Walk Through Fire, sprinkling in hints of disco and humid Memphis soul to complement her folk-rock leanings. Her second album with collaborator Dan Auerbach, Stand for Myself, sees Yola taking hold of her agency as a writer. “A coward in the shadows, no view from above,” she sings in the scorching title track. But no more: Yola also rails against divisive governments and tokenism, while celebrating her sexuality and cherished friendships. It’s top-level stuff from one of contemporary pop’s greatest singers, who just so happens to also be one of its sharpest songwriters. —J.F.

Lainey Wilson has had a gig as a Hannah Montana impersonator, lived for several years in a camper trailer, and put out a handful of independent releases. What the 29-year-old hadn’t done until recently was score a hit. That changed with “Things a Man Oughta Know,” a slice of roots-folk tenderness that starts off as a boast of shotgun-shooting and tire-changing proficiency and swerves into a statement on emotional intelligence. The song is less rowdy than most of her major label-debut, Sayin’ What I’m Thinkin’, which rocks confidently while Nashville superproducer Jay Joyce works his wide-screen magic. The songs feel clever and lived-in; Wilson keeps bars in business and chronicles a doomed relationship on the quiet gut-punch of a title track. Elsewhere she sticks up for her LA (as in: her native Louisiana) and asks “WWDD” (as in: What Would Dolly Do). Mostly, she shows off a hell of a voice, full of range and several colors as well as fire. —C.H.

If the Memphis mystic Valerie June is a direct inheritor of the astral spiritualism of Van Morrison, then this is her Into the Music: An open-hearted celebration of earthly pleasures and grounded physicality that finds June crossing the dark side of the street to the bright side of the road. Over an innovative blend of banjo, strings, and pop drum loops, June blesses the electromagnetic spectrum on “Colors,” cries away heartbreak on “Fallin,” invites Carla Thomas to her soul-revival party on “Call Me a Fool,” and prays equally for sunshine and starry nights on “Why the Bright Stars Glow.” “Look how far we’ve come,” she sings, “Dancing in the sun.” —J.B.

Sturgill Simpson loaded up his rifle and aimed for his version of Red Headed Stranger with this Civil War-era concept album. It succeeds because of its simplicity — Simpson wrote straightforward lyrics that tell an archetypal tale of a hero on a revenge journey. The music is equally accessible, with Simpson leaning into the bluegrass sounds he rediscovered during the pandemic. “Go in Peace” is a barnburner, barreling along on banjo and high-lonesome vocals, while “Played Out” is a too-long-in-the-saddle lament. “Juanita” has vibes of Old Mexico and a guest shot from the OG stranger, Willie Nelson. It’s Simpson’s voice that binds the whole narrative together: gruff one moment, tender the next. This Dood abides. —J.H.

Miranda Lambert’s back-to-nature record with Jon Randall and Jack Ingram — they cut it all outside — is the most relaxed country album of the year. But that’s not to say it lacks energy. Rather, The Marfa Tapes crackles with the electricity of true camaraderie. Over 15 tracks, the three Texans strum their guitars, harmonize, and break out into laughter (listen to the reaction when Lambert flubs a line in “Tequila Does”). There’s classic-country heartbreak here too: “Am I Right or Amarillo” and “In His Arms” both long for a romance that’ll never be. During a time in human history that’s best spent outdoors, Lambert and Co. gave us the perfect campfire record. —J.H.