The Best Country Music Albums of 2025

Charley Crockett - Lonesome Drifter

For those who worried that Charley Crockett’s first release on a major label would come at the price of his artistic integrity, Lonesome Drifter proves they had nothing to worry about.

The crooner's fourteenth studio album retains the essence of the Charley Crockett experience, with its mystique, shady characters and bygone vibe, whilst also marking the evolution of his storytelling and songwriting beyond style.

A musical tapestry that owes much to the Crockett lore of a humble busker on the streets of America, it veers from swampy, psychedelic blues and soul on love songs like 'Never No More' to lush, orchestral strings on the woozy 'This Crazy Life', which might have you feeling like you’ve had one too many gimlets with Dean Martin.

- Holly Smith

Morgan Wallen - I'm The Problem

Like it or not, Morgan Wallen’s I’m The Problem was one of the most successful albums of 2025, and not just in country music. Wallen held the top spot on the Billboard all genre Top 200 chart for 12 weeks - along with the Billboard Top Country album number 1 spot for 25 weeks - when his project was released in May this year.

Since then, the record has firmly placed itself within the lore of the man himself. ‘Cigarettes’, ‘I Got Better’ and ‘TN’ rightly became the firm favourites, along with the already huge single releases ‘Lie Lies Lies’, ‘Love Somebody’ and the combative title track.

While some features on this album came as no surprise - Eric Church, HARDY, ERNEST, and Post Malone all making appearances - Wallen also debuted his first female collaboration. Working with Canadian pop artist, Tate McRae, the pair came together for the super catchy country pop track, ‘What I Want’, showing Wallen isn't turning his nose up at the opportunity to break mainstream ground.

Some listeners debated if the record was fueled by integrity or petulance, but in an interview with Zane Lowe on ‘Apple Music’s New Music Daily Show’, Wallen shared that this album was him taking accountability for his actions and that “maybe I am the problem sometimes”.

Either way, the ‘Dangerous’ singer has once again encapsulated modern country music, using his southern hospitality to invite listeners of all genres to find a song that they love.

- Georgette Brookes

Tyler Braden - devil and a prayer

Tyler Braden's debut album, while a long time coming, was unquestionably worth the wait.

devil and a prayer embraced both the heavy and uplifting sides of the 'GOD & GUNS N' ROSES' singers repertoire, creating a weighty 17-track opus that ultimately cemented Braden as a substantial songwriter with the creative and performative chops to take him to the top.

'More Than A Prayer' accentuates it's punchy country-rock aesthetic with notions of creed and desperation that Jelly Roll would be proud of, 'Above The Water' basks in it's struggle, the drive and enthusiasm to succeed and find fulfilment worth every battle a powerful message for those feeling the weight.

Braden could've easily treated his debut album as one big accompaniment to 'DEVIL YOU KNOW', riding it's success right to the end. As it's closer, Braden instead uses the to solidify his message, ensuring there's much more to the man than one big hit song.

- Ross Jones

Karley Scott Collins - Flight Risk

Five years in the making, Karley Scott Collins broke through in 2025 with Flight Risk, a dark and brooding mission statement.

The album showcases her thick, raw, expressive vocal, her clever wordplay (see 'Heavy Metal', where a wedding ring starts to feel weighty in a marriage gone wrong) and the sheer breadth of her musical skill. Across it, she plays piano, 808s on the drum pad, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, violin, banjo and bass and also provides background vocals, showing we have a multi-talented artist and musician in our presence.

From traumatic relationships and addiction to the sadness of being an only child, KSC is unflinching with her pen and fearless in her artistry.

- Holly Smith

Lola Kirke - Trailblazer

Country music doesn’t always look like dirt roads and honky tonks.

Sometimes, it’s New York City streets and emotional mornings after. Lola Kirke’s Trailblazer was proof of that when she dropped the one-of-a-kind country project in March.

The 10-track collection – full of songs about familial trauma, tough love and self-acceptance – maps the singer-songwriter’s unconventional journey, not just to country music, but toward her truest self.

Now, it stands out as one of the year’s most essential albums, a release that marked a career-defining performance for one of the genre’s greatest outliers.

- Alli Patton

Zandi Holup - Wildflower

Prolific singer-songwriter Zandi Holup unveiled her long-awaited debut album, Wildflower, this past August, providing a soothing balm for some of our deepest and best hidden scars.

Building a musical sanctuary for the outcasts, misfits and others, Holup somehow manages to bring an incandescent beauty to the most painful of experiences in an 11-song package that unpacks drug addiction, familial strife, generational trauma and toxic relationships in many forms.

As we wrote earlier this year, "Wildflower is stitched together with her undying determination to forge her own path and never get swept down the one of least resistance, a mindset that has served her well... and made for a damn good soundtrack, too."

It’s not always a fun listen, but if you’re willing to unearth some of the harder parts of the human condition, then it’s an important one.

- Lydia Farthing

Willi Carlisle - Winged Victory

Few artists are as bold in their artistry as Willi Carlisle.

On Winged Victory, the quirky folk singer-songwriter is at his most ferociously loving, giving his most unpretentiously celebratory acceptance of all the world has to offer. Almost jarringly versatile, the artist moves from traditional folk to instrumental polka, rich harmony acapella to the highest levels of whimsy across an album that celebrates the everyday anthem.

At the sentimental heart sits the wistful cover of ‘Beeswing’, a reminder of just how beautiful Carlisle’s approach to music is beyond the exaggerated costumes, elaborate designs and occasionally comical lyrics.

In direct contrast, ‘Big Butt Billy’ is a queer, bluesy recollection of “what-could’ve-been” and ‘We Have Fed You All For 1000 Years’ is a concertina and banjo fuelled working-class traditional that transitions flawlessly into the anti-capitalist and deeply hopeful song ‘Work is Work’.

All tied together by the thread of American folk music, Winged Victory is an aggressively wholehearted breath of fresh air. It’s a recognition of and advocacy for everyone and anyone - and against some of the other spineless country releases we’ve been given this year, Carlisle is providing a space for safety, love and beyond all else, unserious fun.

- DI

Avery Anna - let go letters

When this album released on the same day as Morgan Wallen’s massive 2025 opus I’m The Problem, it was no surprise that to the average commercial country listener, Avery Anna’s let go letters wasn’t as shiny, exciting or radio friendly as its competition.

It turned out that let go letters was actually one of the most crucially important releases of the year.

When we included it in our Albums You Might Have Missed list at the midpoint of this year, we wrote that "let go letters wasn't created to be a commercial success; there's not really any tried and true radio singles or big in-your-face promotion. Instead, the heart behind this project lies in Anna humbly taking these freely given stories of alcoholism, body dysmorphia, self esteem struggles and mental health battles, and turning them into something altogether more meaningful and beautiful."

As 2025 has unfolded and some parts of our shared human experience have become even more difficult, Avery Anna’s let go letters gives us a space to shake off the masks and egos, if only for 40 minutes, as the young star reminds us that we’re not so different when it’s all said and done.

- LF

Clover County - Finer Things

Mixing the dark humour and dry wit of The Bell Jar with the soft, pastel-hued, dreamlike feel of The Virgin Suicides, the debut full length from Clover County was a thing of wonder.

A soft-focus depiction of girlhood that perfectly captures those lost years between 18 and 23, all set to a mix of ice cool slacker pop and countrified indie folk.

The nom de plume of 24-year-old Georgia Girl A.G. Schiano, Clover County delivers her playful put downs and eye-rolling one-liners with a bright, honeyed twang as she flits between romantic recklessness and lightly existential ruminations on lost time. A reminder of how exciting it is to be young and idealistic, but how sad and lost you can sometimes feel too as she carefully picks over the pieces of broken relationships and puts them back together again as beautiful, bittersweet break-up anthems.

It's a coming-of-age tragi-comedy where she perfectly balances classic country songwriting with a Gen-Z pop sensibility, coming up with a deliciously dreamy mix of moony indie folk and soft and sugary americana that sounds like a cross between Megan Moroney and Mazzy Star. Friendships, family and romantic relationships all come under her microscope with that peculiar nostalgia you feel in your early twenties for a life you've only just left behind that weirdly already feels like someone else lived it.

"You truly won't hear a more beautiful record this year," we wrote about the album when it was released in September and three months on, we're still standing by that.

- Jof Owen

Jordan Davis - Learn The Hard Way

Jordan Davis' 2023 album, Bluebird Days, saw the Louisiana hitmaker settling into a very specific spot in country music: the doting father and dedicated husband.

That's mostly what he sang about on that record (see: 'Next Thing You Know,' 'What My World Spins Around,' 'Buy Dirt,' etc.) Yet, on his 2025 project, Learn The Hard Way, it felt like we got an entirely new flavor from the award-winning country star.

Offering up plenty of southern rock tinged tunes and some feisty barn burners, as well as his usual slate of country weepers and moving love songs, Learn The Hard Way showcases a new layer of Davis’ artistic depth with 17 songs powered by simply damn good songwriting.

- LF

Ken Pomeroy - Cruel Joke

With her second album Cruel Joke, the 22-year-old Oklahoma-born Cherokee Nation member delivers a luminous meditation on inner unrest, shaped by the hard-earned wisdom of her own rough patches.

Her featherlight vocals glide over an earthy folk undercurrent, weaving tender melodies with storytelling that feels both ancient and immediate. Rather than a reset from 2021’s Christmas Lights in April, it serves as a more expansive introduction to Pomeroy’s intricate point of view.

Laced with animal imagery and lessons drawn from nature’s quiet wisdom, Cruel Joke revisits a turbulent upbringing, transforming heartache into something close to transcendence. It is a haunting new chapter from an artist whose voice lingers long after the last note fades—one that promises there is still much more to come.

- Soda Canter

Cameron Whitcomb - The Hard Way

When I first heard a Cameron Whitcomb song, it stopped me dead in my tracks, and when I first listened to The Hard Way, it damn near knocked me off my feet.

While on one hand his music tends to be absurdly catchy for those of us with a bias for pop-punk and alternative music, what really strikes you is the pain and conviction with which he offers up these excavating, personal stories of addition, sobriety and the array of pitfalls he’s made along the way.

Whitcomb’s lauded debut album, The Hard Way, is difficult to describe. Part folk, part rock and part country, the record is wholly Cameron, as he dives shamelessly into the nittiest and grittiest lessons that he’s learned so far on his 22-year-long journey, one head bangin’ lyrically gut-wrenching song at a time.

- LF

Willow Avalon - Southern Belle Raisin' Hell

Georgia-born, New York-based Willow Avalon added a big splash of NYC cool to her contemporary take on classic country with a record that arrived so perfectly formed and fully realised it was as if she'd been practising her whole life for her moment in the spotlight.

She's a cross between a screwball comedy heroine and Loretta Lynn at her most unforgiving, pitching her peculiar take on classic country somewhere between Pageant Material-era Kacey and contemporaries like Lola Kirke and Kaitlin Butts.

Playfully eye-rolling her way around a cesspool of situationships and the age-old dilemmas of a girl about town with her signature Dolly Parton-esque vibrato, she unpacked her anxieties and troubles into 14 modern day country heartbreak anthems where she always came out on top. From betrayal and deception to renewed self-worth and ultimately empowerment.

The wide-eyed, witty and strangely perceptive heroine of her own hilarious romantic comedy, Southern Belle Raisin' Hell starred Willow Avalon as its disarmingly charming, self-deprecating and hard relatable main character. Whether she was discovering that a seemingly nice guy she was dating was secretly married on 'Homewrecker' or joining forces with Maggie Antone - another of 2025's most exciting new country stars - on 'Yodelayheewho' to give a deadbeat ex-boyfriend a mercilessly honest dressing down, the narrow escapes she makes from the worst of men always feel painfully accurate.

Willow Avalon is one of country music’s great eccentrics and at a time when drippy boyfriend country, macho meatheads and dreary bloke folk dominate the genre, she feels like a fabulous whirlwind blowing through it.

Country music is actually cool again, and not because Post Malone is wearing fucking UGG boots.

- JO

Colter Wall - Memories and Empties

Colter Wall has never hidden the fact that he wants to stay out of the mainstream. In fact, that authenticity is what many of us turn to him for.

On Memories and Empties, however, there is no room left up to interpretation, the Canadian cowboy is crafting his words to emphasise that he’s firmly keeping his identity “1800 miles from Music Row”. If this album had to be condensed down to just one idea, it would be that Wall has realised that music might be the only thing worthy of sitting on the same pedestal as the world’s beauty.

At a time when lyrics are becoming increasingly plagued by AI contribution, Wall’s simplicity is as grounding, respectable and human as there is. A track like ‘4/4 Time’ , with its comparisons between music and the divine, manages to stay away from cliche, and instead is admirably genuine. ‘Living By The Hour’ is all we could ask for as a reminder to appreciate the everyday, and ‘Like The Hills’ has a chorus so well crafted that it’s bound to send the track into endless country love story playlists.

With his impossibly low register, classic instrumentation and simple writing, Colter Wall is as timeless as he’s ever been; whether this album was released this year or 50 years ago, it would still be a classic.

- DI

Eric Church - Evangeline Vs The Machine

Upon the arrival of The Chief’s eighth studio album, Evangeline vs The Machine, Eric Church declared that, to him, this was akin to a “movie soundtrack”. While artists are often prone to hyperbole, here, Church’s assessment feels accurate.

Evangeline vs The Machine oozes drama, gravitas and atmosphere, with Church doubling down on the approach of his polarising Stagecoach 2024 set, introducing a choir and orchestra into the studio for much of this album. This more expansive sound mirrors the breadth of subject matter Church tackles on this ambitious project: he lulls you into a false sense of security with the sweet, nostalgic country ode, ‘Hands of Time’, before plunging you into the gut-wrenching anguish of ‘Johnny’ and ‘Darkest Hour’.

‘Johnny’ is undoubtedly the cornerstone, with Church imagining a sequel to Charlie Daniels’ iconic ‘The Devil Went Down to Georgia, in light of the 2023 Nashville Covenant School shooting. It’s haunting, heartbreaking and, yet, hopeful, with Church concretising the gospel-leaning textures he’s been increasingly fond of in recent years through the spellbinding, choir-driven crescendo.

It captures the spirit of this album, one of rebelling against ‘The Machine’ - the faceless enemy that can represent anything from technology to the capitalist rat-race. Evangeline vs The Machine is a rare masterpiece, where the complexity and depth of the narrative is on par with the richness and inventiveness of the composition.

At this stage in Church’s career, it would’ve been easy for him to rest on his laurels and follow the safe, middle-of-the-road blueprint of his contemporaries. But if Evangeline vs The Machine tells us anything about The Chief, it’s that he’s never been one to follow the crowd.

- Maxim Mower

Mackenzie Carpenter - Hey Country Queen

One of modern country music's truly great songwriters, Mackenzie Carpenter was best known for writing monster hits for other artists when the time came for her to take centre stage with her full-length debut.

Having flexed her songwriting muscles on songs like Megan Moroney’s ‘I’m Not Pretty,' ‘Indifferent’ and ‘28th of June,’ as well as Lily Rose’s No.1 smash 'Villain,' Mackenzie Carpenter had been secretly drip feeding us perfectly formed pop country songs for the last few years, until she finally satiated us with Hey Country Queen, proving once and for all that she’s one of the most exciting and most clever country songwriters around right now.

Across 13 perfectly formed pop country songs, she pays homage to the country queens that paved the way for her to speak her mind, write her truth and have a damn good time doing it, as she adds herself to a lineage that Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton began.

Switching effortlessly from the playful country pop swagger of 'Dozen Red Flags' to the country clap-along 'Boots On' and the Miranda Lambert-esque country rocker 'Sound of a Heartbreak' into the album's more intimate moments like 'Only Girl' and 'The Other Side,' Hey Country Queen was a true pop country gem in a year when it felt like the Great and Serious Male Artist ™ was dominating the conversation.

Whether she was hooking up for a little good old fashioned country chirpsing with Midland on the steamy viral duet, 'I Wish You Would' or nursing her wounds on the sweeping, orchestral break up anthem 'Red Wine Blue,' Mackenzie Carpenter fully embraced her inner country queen and captured the essence of womanhood, heartbreak and love.

- JO

Jason Isbell - Foxes in the Snow

Foxes in the Snow finds Jason Isbell at both his sharpest and softest yet.

Isbell’s lyricism has always cut close to the heart, but here, it’s colder, more deliberate, almost cinematic. Each song feels like a short story unfolding against a stark winter backdrop; fragile, brutal, and beautiful all at once.

There’s no pretense in this record. Just life, told plainly and poetically: love that doesn’t last, grief that lingers, and hope that still, somehow, keeps showing up. It’s Isbell doing what he’s always done best; turning ordinary pain into poetry, but with an ache that feels aged, like he’s writing from the far side of something he’s finally learned to live with.

It’s an album that feels like it was meant to be listened to alone, headlights reflecting off snow, each line reminding you that survival can be its own small grace. It’s a quiet kind of brilliance, a songwriter at peace with his own chaos.

- Caitlin Hall

Luke Bell - The King Is Back

When Luke Bell tragically passed in 2022, he left behind a vast songbook of unreleased music.

This past November – some three years after his death – a posthumous collection, dubbed The King Is Back, was unveiled. The 28-track album was assembled with care by the artist’s mother, Carol Bell, alongside his former manager Brian Buchanan, and features songs tracked between November 2013 and August 2016.

The collection is sprinkled with heart-heavy ballads, like the harrowing ‘Black Crows’ and the shuffling ‘Horse Flies’, that give a glimpse into the anguish the artist carried inside. It is also flush with jovial odes to life, the buoyant ‘Ready for Love’ and the shimmering ‘Hand to Hold’ acting as testaments to the charming figure that graced country music for a brief but influential time.

The King Is Back is a gift. Because of it, Bell and his music remain alive.

- AP

Margo Price - Hard Headed Woman

A literal and spiritual homecoming of sorts, Hard Headed Woman returned one of country music's most genuine queens to her rightful place on the throne with her wisest, funniest, fiercest and most vulnerable album yet.

Reunited with Midwest Farmer's Daughter and All American Made producer Matt Ross-Spang and recorded in the historic RCA Studio A, the setting for Waylon Jennings' Honky Tonk Heroes and Jolene by Dolly Parton among countless other genre defining country records, the fifth studio album from Margo Price fully delivered on the promise of a return to the country sound of her first two albums.

If ever there was a time we needed Margo Price in country music, it's now. These are dark times - politically, socially, economically, pretty much everything-ally - and as art rises to meet the moment, every artist finds different ways of dealing.

Hard Headed Woman offered us a whole range of acceptable emotional responses to the shitstorm of the modern age. Sometimes looking backwards in the hope of finding answers, like on 'Losing Streak' or the wistfully nostalgic 'Nowhere is Where' and sometimes just fantasizing about escaping it all into the alternate universes of 'Close To You' and the Jesse Welles duet, 'Don't Wake me Up.' Margo Price might not be exactly partying her way through the end of the world like Charli XCX is, but she found moments of genuine joy as the shit hits the fan.

Country music at its most straight-talking and straight up was found in everything from the Tejano-soaked Tex-Mex of 'Wild At Heart' to the playfully flirty waltz with Tyler Childers, 'Love Me Like You Used To Do,' which might arguably be the best song either artist released this year.

Over the years, Margo Price has come up with a lot of different ways of saying "Fuck you" but 'Don't Let the Bastards Get You Down' might be her most succinct manifesto yet. An anthem for the overlooked and underserved, the marginalised and the maligned, the song's title originates from a call for resistance in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, but it was Kris Kristofferson who inspired the song, and Price reworked his words into a rattling honky tonk classic and a reminder to always keep fighting for the things you believe in.

A true American original and an absolute classic. Just like the woman herself.

- JO

Lauren Watkins - In A Perfect World

A strong mark of her artistic evolution since 2024’s The Heartbroken Record, In A Perfect World presents a much more cohesive look at who Lauren Watkins is as an artist.

Whilst always in possession of fine country chops with her smoky, bar-hewn drawl, In A Perfect World sonically leans more into a neo-traditional sound.

She uses the compact ten tracks wisely, veering from sweet domestic bliss on 'Average Joe & Plain Jane', to dangerous barroom encounters and vibrant musicality on the John Morgan collaboration 'Slippery Slope', all to the sparsely arranged, brooding western legend of 'Marlboro Man'.

Through it all, we see an artist growing, streamlining and nailing her country bonafides firmly to the wall.

- HS

Zach Top - Ain't In It For My Health

Zach Top isn’t reinventing the wheel, he’s polishing it until it gleams.

On Ain’t In It For My Health, the traditionalist doubles down on his devotion to pure, unfiltered country music. It’s full of nostalgia, fiddle runs, and steel guitar, sure, but beneath all of that, there’s something more at play, like a self assured artistry that feels entirely his own.

'Between the Ditches' anchors the album with its effortless flow and classic country soul, proving that simplicity, when done right, can still hit like a freight train. Elsewhere, songs like “Flip–Flop” and “Tightrope” show Top’s playful precision - one that's easy going, the other sure and stray, proving he can stretch his lyricism without ever losing its classic flow sonically. 

Even as skeptics questioned whether he could rise above the heights of his debut, this record answers back with a grin and a raised glass. Ain’t In It For My Health doesn’t feel like a flash of fame, but more about grounding his own legacy, even when it feels like he’s just getting started.

- CH

Carter Faith - Cherry Valley

Though a real town in Tennessee, Carter Faith’s Cherry Valley is a dreamland built from the cornerstones of her own imagination.

It is a space where Faith channels outsized emotion with flair, drama, and even a touch of humor to process the fast-moving feelings of early adulthood. While the influences of Taylor Swift and Kacey Musgraves are notable here, what is striking is Faith’s superb control over her own artistry, especially on her debut project.

While earworm standouts like ‘Betty’ and ‘Bar Star’ shimmer with radio-ready charm, it is on the sweeping ballad ‘If I Had Never Lost My Mind’ that Faith delivers a vocal performance unlike anything else heard in 2025. Operatic in scale, she channels every ounce of pain and grace from love lost, summoning the same emotional authority once carried by Tammy Wynette and Linda Ronstadt.

Cherry Valley marks an assured first step in what promises to be a career full of magic.

- SC

Turnpike Troubadours - The Price of Admission

When the Turnpike Troubadours sat down with Holler in 2025, they described the process of creating Price of Admission as them “learning how to have fun again”.

Their second album with legendary producer Shooter Jennings, Price of Admission felt like the marking of a clean slate. As the shining example of simplicity done flawlessly, it feels like this year Turnpike really found solid ground.

The album is laced with the embrace of joy, recognition of pain and the acceptance of all that comes in between. It’s an encouragement to keep walking forwards even when the ghosts of the past might try to pull you back, ultimately, it’s the affirmation that “I will not trade tomorrow for the pain I feel today”.

With what might be their most ‘Turnpike’ album yet, reflective tracks like ‘On The Red River’ and the stunning ‘Heaven Passing Through’ are balanced against the unbridled joy of ‘Ruby Ann’. In classic storytelling fashion, the locational specificity of ‘Leaving Town (Woody Guthrie Festival)’ drags us into the story and lingers in the unknown of where, who and why? ‘Be Here’ stands out in the structure of a communally supportive sea shanty, yet, as a collection, Price of Admission is a whole, consistently high quality album of country music.

It comes as no surprise that Price of Admission has kept its place near the top of the list since its March release. In 11 tracks, the red-dirt group reminded us of what to hold onto in the midst of an often messy, complicated and overwhelming world - “living in the here and now”.

- DI

Tyler Childers - Snipe Hunter

On Snipe Hunter, Tyler Childers doesn’t just return, he transforms.

The Kentucky native once again holds a mirror to his home, his faith, and his flaws, but this time, the reflection looks stranger, deeper, and more electric than ever before. The album balances spiritual restlessness with Appalachian grit, drifting between gospel, bluegrass, and full-blown rock like a man chasing redemption through sound.

There’s an undeniable weight to this record, but it’s not heavy for the sake of it. Childers makes contradiction feel sacred: sin and grace, humor and heartbreak, life and the afterlife. From the hard but honest truth of 'Bitin’ List' to the classic Childers sound of 'Nose on the Grindstone,' it’s a world only he could build, where every lyric feels carved from his bones.

Even in its experimentation, there’s a steadiness - the kind that comes from an artist who no longer needs to prove himself, only to tell the truth as he sees it. 

At its heart, Snipe Hunter isn’t about leaving the past behind; it’s about honoring it, holding it close, and turning it into something holy.

- CH

Waylon Jennings - Songbird

Songbird marks the 47th studio album from country icon Waylon Jennings, a breathtaking time capsule of unreleased recordings with the Waylors spanning 1973 to 1984—the height of his creative reign.

Its origin story feels almost fated. Shooter Jennings began digitizing his father’s long-shelved tapes in 2008, returning years later to restore them with meticulous care. Then, in 2024, he uncovered a treasure trove of full-band sessions cut between tours, brimming with the raw spirit that defined outlaw country. Working through a vintage 1976 DeMedio Custom API console, he finished the project with a light touch, allowing the warmth of the original analog magic to glow through. The result is spellbinding.

From the opening strains of the lovelorn title track to the wistful closer, ‘Dink’s Blues,’ Songbird unfolds like a love letter to the genre that shaped Jennings’ soul. Every line, every guitar lick hums with the unshakable devotion of a man who lived and breathed country music.

To hear his voice anew is not just a gift, but a reminder: even decades after his passing, Waylon Jennings remains one of the most vital storytellers American music has ever known.

- SC