Issue #81: Our 2025 Country Music Forecast

It's gonna involve a couple Zach's, that's for damn sure

By Marissa

If 2024 was the year of country music, then what does 2025 bring? We’re no oracles here at Don’t Rock the Inbox, but we’ve been thinking a lot about what the climate looks like for the New Year when it comes to this newsletter’s particular genre of expertise, especially in the mainstream space. Will country music continue to break records and drive the cultural conversation? How will a Trump presidency impact what happens on Music Row? What albums are we actually excited about, and that we think will make some waves (or at least wind up on heavy rotation in our playlists)? What stupid shit will country radio continue to do? We did our best to make a few predictions…

Zach Top is on top [or insert whatever your preferred play on words RE “Top” is]

Country music is more popular than ever (yawn), but what are we really talking about when we say “country music” here? Is it a digestible to the masses, vaguely MAGA, Woodstock 99 Goes South version (Jelly Roll, Morgan Wallen), or is it connected to the roots of the genre and the instruments that have defined it? For the most part it’s been the former, but Zach Top seems poised to make classic country sounds mainstream. Though Top’s debut album Cold Beer & Country Music already came out, he’s been continuously on the rise: his single “I Never Lie” cracked the Billboard 100, his solo Cold Beer & Country Music tour sold out the second it was announced, and he’s was nominated for artist of the year at CMA’s. It’s one thing for Jelly and Morgan Wallen to boast mass appeal, who sound just as pop as anything else, but are lap steel and fiddle next? Walking through doors that Sturgill Simpson, Tyler Childers and Midland already opened, I’d wager to say yes. Top’s got the magic to mix it all together. Wouldn’t be surprised if he’s leading a ‘90s Country Revival by this time next year.

Zach Bryan threatens to never make music or tour again multiple times, still releases 2-3 albums.

You know it’s true.

Ella Langley is this year’s “one woman.”

Which is great - love Ella Langley. Hate that the only way we let women score a number one on country radio is still by appearing on duet with a man (“You Look Like You Love Me” with Riley Green), and hate that we only really let one woman at a time break through when it comes to mainstream Nashville. It’s Langley for 2025, we bet.

I continue to listen to Julien Baker and Torres’ “Sugar in the Tank” nonstop.

What will be will be!

Carly Pearce finally makes a bluegrass album.

This is not exactly a prediction as much as a manifestation. But come on Carly…it’s time.

Sierra Ferrell plays Saturday Night Live and truly breaks through to the pop/mainstream world.

It’s deserved, and it’s high time.

More “bros” try to get serious.

Thanks to Chase Rice’s (successful) heel turn from bro-dom with this year’s Go Down Singing, more bros will try to follow. Canaan Smith already has an album on the books that marks a more serious transition, and apparently so does Brian Kelley, the Florida half of FGL. Will any of them actually be good? I am skeptical, but I am open. Bless their hearts.

Speaking of FGL..they get back together.

Going out on a limb here, but between Trump being re-elected, Georgia going red again and some very RFK-esque content I’ve seen on the Instagram feed of a certain FGL wife, coupled with their lack of breakaway success as solo artists, it wouldn’t surprise me. Maybe a Vegas residency?

Margo Price releases a kickass country album.

Zero intel here - just going on clues, especially from her substack (Why I Left Country Music & Why I'm Coming Back To Kick Its Ass in particular).

Lana Del Rey’s “country” album sounds like…Lana Del Rey.

But the conversation worth having is how disconnected we have gotten from any ideas of folk tradition being part of pop music!

So does Chappell Roan’s.

I am very excited for an album version of “Gets the Job Done,” which is definitely country but also definitely Chappell Roan, and I hope helps lead the conversation around country music, along with Lana, into more interesting places that explore how folk and roots sounds are foundational.

With a second Trump presidency, country radio gets worse. Yes, even worse. It’s possible!

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news here, but the fight for any room for diverse representation on country radio - and all radio - is about to get a lot harder. Country radio is still making money peddling exactly what it always has (mostly white men, occasional white women), but now it will be emboldened and overseen by Trump’s pick to run the FCC, Brendan Carr, who wrote a whole chapter in the Project 2025 guidebook on the agency itself. Of course any initiatives and efforts to diversify the radio waves will be out the window, but consolidation and oversight - when it comes to whatever is deemed to be “political” on the radio, particularly against Trump - will further whitewash and sterilize what we hear. It’s going to be more important than ever to build systems outside of country radio and Music Row.

Mainstream Christian country will continue to rise.

Because of the above. Artists like Anne Wilson and Gabby Barrett are already pushing how much faith they can bring into the mainstream country room. With Trump as president and Carr at the FCC, I’m guessing any separation of church and state dissolves and more music that would normally be categorized as Christian just ends up in the Country pile.

There will still be incredible music. You just have to find it.

And we’re here to help. We’re anticipating new music from rising stars like Olivia Wolf and Sunny War, an album from The War & Treaty, maybe something from friends of the newsletter Vandoliers? And so much more. The climate won’t be pretty, but the music will be. That much we know.