Home Music Music Lists

The 200 Greatest Country Songs of All Time

From Hank to Shania, from George Strait to Beyoncé

Greatest country songs of all time

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY GRIFFIN LOTZ. PHOTOGRAPHS IN ILLUSTRATION BY ETHAN MILLER/GETTY IMAGES; MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES, 2; AARON RAPOPORT/CORBIS/GETTY IMAGES; GAB ARCHIVE/REDFERNS/GETTY IMAGES; ADOBE STOCK

WHAT MAKES A great country song? It tells a story. It draws a line. It has a twang you can feel down to the soles of your feet. Some get mad, some get weepy, some just get you down the road. And these are the songs that map out the story of country music — from Hank Williams howling at the moon to Ray Charles giving “hillbilly” music an R&B makeover to Shania Twain taking her karaoke-cowgirl feminism worldwide, and much more.

In 2014, Rolling Stone launched Rolling Stone Country and inaugurated the new site with a list of the 100 Greatest Country Songs. Now, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of RS Country, we’re expanding the list to 200 songs. The new list gave us more room to go deeper into the music’s rich history, including some aspects that didn’t get enough attention the first time around. We’re publishing our updated list at a time when a classic Tracy Chapman folk song can become a country Number One, and Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter is shining a light on the legacies of Black country artists like Linda Martell. Nearly a century after artists like the Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers, and DeFord Bailey helped get the story started, the tradition keeps growing.

CONTRIBUTORS: Joseph Hudak, Jon Freeman, Christopher Weingarten, David Cantwell, Brittney McKenna, Angie Martoccio, Michaelangelo Matos, Joe Gross, Jeff Gage, Rob Sheffield, Nick Murray, Will Hermes, Keith Harris, Jon Dolan, Maya Georgi, Richard Gehr, Reed Fischer, Jonathan Bernstein, Beville Dunkerley, Cady Drell, Marissa R. Moss, David Menconi, Linda Ryan, Andrew Leahey, Mike Powell, Charles Aaron, Rob Harvilla, Amanda Petrusich

From Rolling Stone US

167

Margo Price, ‘Hurtin’ (on the Bottle)’

The recipe for a great country song? Hang out with your friends on a porch and pass around a bottle of Bulleit Rye. Margo Price wrote “Hurtin’” one evening with her husband, Jeremy Ivey, along with Caitlin Rose and Mark Fredson, and released it on her 2016 debut, Midwest Farmer’s Daughter. It’s still her most popular song, because who doesn’t love a swinging anthem about whiskey and heartbreak? Though Price has since quit alcohol, she doesn’t mind performing “Hurtin’ (on the Bottle).” In fact, she welcomes it. As she told Rolling Stone last year. “Jeremy was like, ‘You don’t even drink anymore. Do you want to play any drinking song? Do you even think that that connects with you?’ I was like, ‘It fucking resonates with me now more than ever.’” —A.M.

166

Brandy Clark, ‘Pray to Jesus’

Brandy Clark was already an A-list Nashville writer (see Miranda Lambert’s “Mama’s Broken Heart,” et al.) when “Pray to Jesus,” the opening scene of Clark’s solo debut, 12 Stories, introduced a singer-songwriter of consequence. Delivered in first person on behalf of folks who “pray to Jesus” and “play the lotto” because “there ain’t but two ways/We can change tomorrow,” it’s a character study that might sound a bit condescending until the details accrue, and you feel its knowing empathy. Clark’s easy way with wordplay — funny, wise, poignant, and pained — has taken her and frequent co-writer Shane McAnally all the way to Broadway, via their work on the musical Shucked. —W.H.

165

Tony Joe White, ‘Polk Salad Annie’

Though Louisiana-born Tony Joe White begins by defining “polk salad” for anyone who may have “never been down South too much,” and spends most of his time telling tales about the title character’s chain-gang-working mama, no-count dad, and alligator-eaten granny (“chomp, chomp”), this is first and foremost a love song — just check out White’s horny grunts, randy guitar licks, and sweaty groove as he remembers wild child Annie. Cut with the original Muscle Shoals rhythm section, years after they’d transplanted to Nashville for session work, “Polk Salad Annie” was an early example of a rootsy subgenre that became known as country funk. Decades later, it remains the country funkiest. —D.C.

164

Wanda Jackson, ‘Hot Dog! That Made Him Mad’

Wanda Jackson sang with her own feral growl, aggressively sexual, a danger girl born to raise hell. The Oklahoma firecracker earned her Fifties crown as the Queen of Rockabilly. Discovered by her idol Hank Thompson, touring with her boy Elvis Presley, Jackson banged out a string of libidinally crazed tunes like “Fujiiyama Mama,” “Funnel of Love,” and “Tongue Tied.” But her ultimate classic is the 1956 single “Hot Dog! That Made Him Mad,” the feminist guitar anthem where Jackson raves about the erotic thrills of tormenting the menfolk. She defined the rebel spirit of female rockabilly pioneers like Janis Martin and the Collins Kids. In later years, Jackson turned to gospel (“Jesus Put a Yodel in My Soul”), but she teamed up with fan Jack White for her superbly unrepentant 2011 comeback, The Party Ain’t Over. —R.S.

163

Hank Snow, ‘I’m Moving On’

Hank Snow sings “I’m Moving On” with his characteristically nasal and hyper-enunciated twang. He says he’s catching a train back south as fast as he can to escape the “pretty mama” who did this “true-loving daddy” wrong. It’s a good bet, though, that the reason his song remained perched atop the country chart for a ridiculous 21 weeks is his band’s headlong rhythm — its train-track sway, lonesome-whistle steel guitar, and his own hot flat-picked lead. “I’m Movin’ On” was state-of-the art country & western in the middle of the last century, and here in our new one, Snow’s record still sounds like it’s gaining steam. —D.C.

162

The Band Perry, ‘If I Die Young’

This 2010 breakout from the Band Perry’s self-titled debut album goes right past the idea of living fast and goes straight to dying young. Written by lead singer Kimberly Perry, “If I Die Young” remains peerless in its heart-wrenching portrayal of a life taken too soon, turning on the almost too-vivid image of “the sharp knife of a short life.” Certified seven-times platinum, the song remains the sibling trio’s biggest hit and has had a pop culture life of its own — featured prominently on American Idol (famously performed during Season 10 by Lauren Alaina) and Glee, on which it was covered by the late Naya Rivera in honor of castmate Cory Monteith, who died at age 31 in 2013. Rivera notably died young, too, passing away at age 33 in 2020, at which point the song saw a resurgence in popularity. —B.M.

161

Dave Dudley, ‘Six Days on the Road’

Before there was “White Line Fever,” “Convoy,” or “East Bound and Down,” there was “Six Days on the Road,” the song that forever hitched country’s hard-working, blue-collar image to the trailer of a semitruck. While not the first trucking song by any stretch of highway, “Six Days” was an early hit that masterfully captured the loneliness, monotony, demands, and minutiae of truck life. “I think it was one of those songs that truck drivers in those days were waiting for,” Dave Dudley told the authors of The All-American Truck Stop Cookbook. “They were kind of like outlaws back then. After that song came out, I got letters from those guys saying thank you for taking the load off our back. It kind of helped change their image to knights of the road.” —C.W.

160

David Allan Coe, ‘You Never Even Called Me by My Name’

Of all the places to write “the perfect country & western song,” per this tune’s own lyrics, it’s hard to think of anywhere more unlikely than Paul Anka’s personal suite at the Waldorf Astoria. Yet that’s where Steve Goodman and John Prine first put pen to paper on this parody/celebration of country music cliches. “I was feeling pretty good,” said Prine, referring to a successful raid of Anka’s liquor cabinet, “so I jumped up on the bed and acted like I had an imaginary fiddle and said, ‘But you don’t have to call me darlin’, darlin’.” Most artists would have run from the song’s cheekiness. David Allan Coe, however, played it up, adding a bridge in which Goodman himself appears as a character, intentionally writing more clichés into the lyrics. —N.M.

159

The Mavericks, ‘All You Ever Do Is Bring Me Down’

Billboard had a good phrase to describe the Mavericks’ position vis-a-vis the mid-Nineties Nashville firmament: “unorthodox but platinum.” Their biggest hit on the Billboard country chart — reaching Number 13 in 1996 — is an irresistibly spry Tex-Mex groover: organ spritz on the two and the four, insistent shakers and hi-hats throughout, Raul Malo’s handsomely husky tenor having the time of its life. All of it is a setup for Flaco Jiménez’s accordion, constantly commenting on the action, assuming a comfortable place in front of the music whenever it flickers into earshot. —M.M.

158

Jim Reeves, ‘He’ll Have to Go’

This dreamy, swooning lovers conversation was the biggest vocal hit of 1960. A classic of the early Nashville sound, the vibraphone-heavy waltz intentionally mirrored the arrangement released earlier in the year by rockabilly performer Billy Brown. However, it was the deep, velvet-smooth baritone of Gentleman Jim Reeves that took the song over the top. “I can’t really tell you what the reason for that tune’s popularity was, except that I get the very pathetic picture of the old fellow standing in the telephone booth, about half plastered, talking with his girl, asking her to run the other guy off,” Reeves said. “Makes for pretty good listening though, I guess.” —C.W. 

157

Kenny Chesney, ‘The Good Stuff’

A newlywed couple has their first fight, so the man takes off to a bar. But instead of getting hammered and commiserating with his bartender, he gets served a glass of milk. Chesney applies multiple meanings to the title: “The Good Stuff” could be a stiff drink, but it also signifies meaningful moments in life. By the end, it’s revealed the bartender lost his wife to cancer, and the memory of her is stronger than anything whiskey can offer. Songwriters Craig Wiseman and Jim Collins wrote the track after their friend lost his spouse to illness. “We were talking about, what if you just sat there and watched your wife die?” Wiseman later recalled. “We both just sat there and were sort of stunned for a minute. We said, ‘OK, let’s get a cup of coffee and write a song!’” —A.M. 

156

Barbara Mandrell, ‘(If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don’t Want to Be Right’

This wasn’t country’s earliest adaptation of disco’s patented boom-swish beat, but aside from Dolly Parton’s “Nine to Five,” it may have been the era’s canniest, with drummer Hayward Bishop utilizing those club-ready accents while sticking resolutely with a bouncy two-step rhythm. The track floats like Philly soul (the strings are more Barry White than Billy Sherrill) while remaining resolutely Nashville — but the song itself came from Memphis, a 1972 soul hit on Stax Records for Luther Ingram. Barbara Mandrell, eight albums in and ready for the big stage, took this pained, guilt-ridden, overwhelmingly horny lyric and delivered a showstopper, at once subtle and inflamed. It was her peak crossover moment, reaching the Billboard pop Top 40, her only appearance there. —M.M.

155

Florida Georgia Line, ‘Cruise’

There was a time, not so long ago, when combining country and hip-hop was considered blasphemous, problematic, gauche, and maybe even avant garde too. “Cruise” was all of this and more, a high-summer love song in which trucks, girls, and the FGL boys themselves all take turns as objects of affection. Like a few of the other records on this list, it initially was accused of ruining country music. (“There’s no label that can really hurt our feelings,” FGL’s Brian Kelley said when asked about “bro country” on 60 Minutes.) A decade later, however, the twangy banjo that plays during the verses almost sounds old-fashioned — just as the jacked-up Silverado in the music video almost looks small. —N.M.

154

Mickey Guyton, ‘Black Like Me’

Mickey Guyton delights in country music tradition; she happens to be a Black woman, and she mapped out her experience in this breakthrough ballad. “If you think we live in the land of the free/You should try to be black like me,” she sang over pedal-steel cries on the track, teasing out the strands of R&B and Black church music so integral to country’s 21st century DNA. The song sat on her shelf until the murders of Ahmaud Aubrey and George Floyd spurred her to post fragments of it to social media. The response was swift, and within a year, she’d perform it on the Grammys — remarkably, shockingly, the first Black woman ever nominated for Best Country Solo Performance. Guyton didn’t win. But her song changed the dialogue around Black country artists, and it helped open doors for a generation of new voices. —W.H.

153

Emmylou Harris, ‘Boulder to Birmingham’

Emmylou Harris was on the cusp of stardom and one of the most in-demand singers in Nashville when she released her sophomore album, Pieces of the Sky, in 1975, but she was weighed down by grief. Her singing partner, mentor, and close friend Gram Parsons had died a little over a year before from a drug overdose. Harris channeled that heartache into what became her signature song. “Words can be so powerful to help you express something you can’t otherwise,” she said years later. “And everyone has experienced loss.” Few people, however, could make it sound so beautiful, a raw confession of sorrow illuminated by her shimmering soprano, destined to be one of the most unmistakable voices in country music. —J. Gage

152

Joe Diffie, ‘John Deere Green’

The Oklahoma singer Joe Diffie sang the ultimate small-town romance in “John Deere Green,” from the legendary songwriter Dennis Linde. It’s a gem of country storytelling, where Billy Bob declares his love for Charlene by painting their names inside a 10-foot heart on the water tower. The tractor-themed color is the detail that clinches it, with the hook, “The whole town said that he should’ve used red/But it looked good to Charlene, in John Deere green.” In March 2020, Diffie tragically became one of music’s first victims of the Covid-19 pandemic, only 61, but he left a lifetime’s worth of classics like “Honky Tonk Attitude,” “Pickup Man,” and “Bigger Than the Beatles.” —R.S.

151

Conway Twitty, ‘You’ve Never Been This Far Before’

Conway Twitty was a rock and roller who in the Sixties and Seventies helped transition Elvis Presley-styled balladry into the country mainstream and who sang about sex as frankly and routinely as any country singer before him. “You’ve Never Been This Far Before,” where Twitty purrs that his “trembling fingers touch forbidden places,” was even boycotted, if only briefly, by a few major stations. What makes this record work is how understated, even naked, it all sounds — the only instrument that registers most of the way is throbbing electric bass — and the way Twitty’s repeated “buh-buh-buh” doubles as heartbeat and hook. —D.C.