VMP Magazine

Country music in 2018 was in a weird place: After close to three years of dominance from Chris Stapleton, and “He’s doing things the right way” talk about Sturgill Simpson, there wasn’t really a giant lightning-rod album that gave the year it’s defining statement. The new Eric Church album was solid, but it had less heat than his revealing Rolling Stone cover story. Sam Hunt still didn’t put out a new album. Stapleton, Simpson, Isbell et. al., mostly sat the year out, or performed live a bunch. Florida Georgia Line had a song at No. 1 for a whole-ass calendar year, but everyone kind of shrugged about it. The main issue in country music — which has been the issue since at least 1963 — is that radio programmers are still being openly sexist, and refusing to play women artists for reasons basically boiling down to a bunch of men being afraid of women.

Without a unifying story, this list of the 10 Best Country and Americana Albums of the year doesn’t have a narrative arc of any kind, but that allowed for a variety of albums, from pop country kings and legends to Canadian boys making C&W records and three women reuniting to deliver their best album yet. Here are the 10 Best Country and Americana Albums of 2018.

Last year, I opened this list with a discussion of 2016 was the year that bro-country was forced to reckon with itself, that songs about short shorts and pickups would no longer make you a top country star. 2017 has mostly borne that out; the bros have given way to a gentler shade of male, like singers like Brett Eldredge and Chris Young, guys who won’t sing about Fireball or any other rail whiskey product.

But ultimately, it was a quiet year for country music. Chris Stapleton dominated the charts for more than a quarter of the year, but there wasn’t a lodestar album that dominated the conversation this year, and it seemed like every other week boasted a country album that needed attention. Shania came back, Kane Brown came up, and everybody from Jason Isbell to Brad Paisley took their time at number one.

If there was a debate to be had, it was over that recurs every 10 years debate over who gets to make country music, like it wasn’t decided at least by the moment that Merle “Born In California” Haggard became one of the genre’s biggest stars in the ‘60s that literally anyone anywhere can be “authentic” country. A bunch of performers found themselves embroiled in debates that were litigated in Rolling Stone Country and elsewhere over who qualifies as getting to make “real” country. It’s a debate that’s been had over and over--CMA Entertainer Of The Year Garth Brooks used to be considered “inauthentic”--and the 10 albums below sometimes found themselves embroiled in that discussion. But this year proved, for the millionth time, that great country music can be made by former ad execs, and former models, and former Pistol Annies, and 22-year-old wunderkinds from Saskatchewan.