The 20 Best Country Radio Hits of 2022
Here's the Spotify playlist. I've already done the rap, pop, and R&B lists, will finish up with the rock list soon.
1. Cody Johnson - "Til You Can't"
#1 Country Airplay, #18 Hot 100
This song makes me feel something almost every time, which I can't say about many songs. The other day it came on the radio and I almost missed a turn getting caught up in the second verse. I love the way it build and builds, with the drums dropping out at the perfect moment in the last chorus and that "yeahhhhhh, take it" at the end.
2. Zach Bryan - "Something In The Orange"
#32 Country Airplay, #12 Hot 100
Zach Bryan, a young singer-songwriter from Oklahoma who built a following as an independent artist while enlisted in the Navy, released American Heartbreak, a massive and ambitious 34-song major label debut in May that debuted at #5 on the Billboard 200. Country radio usually ignores even pretty successful alt-country and Americana artists if their singles are as quiet and contemplative as "Something In The Orange," and Bryan parodied slick country radio conventions on the snarky album track "If She Wants A Cowboy." To my surprise, though, "Something In The Orange" has spent the last 5 months slowly climbing to the middle of the Country Airplay chart, and I'm really curious to see how much higher it can go.
3. Carly Pearce f/ Ashley McBryde - "Never Wanted To Be That Girl"
#1 Country Airplay, #63 Hot 100
Ashley McBryde made my favorite country album of 2020 and Carly Pearce made my favorite country album of 2021. So I was pretty pleased to see their collaboration from the latter album hit #1, a clever splitscreen duet where McBryde plays the girlfriend who just found he has a wife, and Pearce plays the wife who just found out he has a girlfriend.
4. Jackson Dean - "Don't Come Lookin'"
#3 Country Airplay, #50 Hot 100
Maryland is below the Maxon-Dixon line and a lot of country music lovers live here, but we haven't launched a whole lot of country stars. So I very excitedly root for Brothers Osborne and now Odenton's Jackson Dean, who released his debut album in March and saw the lead single blossom into a major hit after it was featured in "Yellowstone." And the drummer in Dean's touring band is Sean Mercer, a Baltimore indie rock veteran I've known for years from his work in bands like Teen Suicide and Us And Us Only.
5. Jimmie Allen - "Down Home"
#6 Country Airplay, #88 Hot 100
I also lived in Delaware for 10 years, about 20 minutes from where Jimmie Allen grew up, so I feel a bit of local pride watching his career as well (the last time I went to visit family in Sussex County in August, we drove past the stage being set up for Allen's Bettie James Fest in Milton, and I was sad that I didn't work the festival into my travel plans). Allen released his third and best album Tulip Drive this year. And the single "Down Home" is a poignant ode to late relatives that namechecks Charley Pride, who passed away in 2020 after guesting on a Jimmie Allen song in one of his final recordings.
6. Sam Hunt - "23"
#1 Country Airplay, #50 Hot 100
"23" is a really beautifully written nostalgic ode to young love. I'm still married to the same person I was with when we were 23, but the story in the song is so bittersweet that I feel it every time.
7. Cole Swindell f/ Lainey Wilson - "Never Say Never"
#1 Country Airplay, #27 Hot 100
It's a little boring that most country duets go the obvious route of letting one singer takes the first verse, the other the second verse, and maybe they share a third verse. So I like the structure of "Never Say Never," with Cole and Lainey going back-and-forth like Styles and Jada, each doing half of every couplet.
8. Brett Eldredge - "Songs About You"
#38 Country Airplay
Songs About You is one of my favorite country albums of 2022, Brett Eldredge letting his soulful growl loose on songs that are heavy on horns and acoustic guitars. I'm pretty disappointed that the title track lead single flopped, hopefully he can still get a hit out of this excellent album.
9. Kelsea Ballerini - "Heartfirst"
#22 Country Airplay
Kelsea Ballerini announced her divorce from fellow country singer Morgan Evans a few weeks ahead of her latest album Subject To Change, I expected maybe a harrowing divorce record like the last Carly Pearce and Kacey Musgraves albums. But Subject To Change is a pretty sunny and upbeat album with a heavy Shania Twain influence -- maybe she'll get to the breakup songs on the next record.
10. Morgan Wade - "Wilder Days"
#29 Country Airplay
Arista Nashville signed Morgan Wade and re-released her 2021 independent album Reckless this year with new bonus tracks, and turned her great single "Wilder Days" into a moderate hit. So I'm really hopeful that they can help her become a major star, she's got a fantastic voice.
11. Kane Brown - "One Mississippi"
#1 Country Airplay, #36 Hot 100
Biracial country star Kane Brown has been making incremental moves towards pop, R&B, and hip hop throughout his career, sometimes with moderate success. But this year he made a big move, performing the clubby, garish "Grand" (co-written with Mike Posner) at the MTV Video Music Awards and promoting it to Top 40 radio. And it pretty much flopped, while two other singles from the same album hit #1 on country radio, so it feels clearer than ever that he's gonna remain a country star but probably never be a pop star.
12. Nate Smith - "Whiskey On You"
#10 Country Airplay, #44 Hot 100
TikTok's biggest footprint on mainstream country is still probably the detestable Walker Hayes hit "Fancy Like," but some pretty promising new artists are getting signed off of TikTok buzz, including Priscilla Block and Nate Smith, whose debut album will be out in February.
13. Maren Morris - "Circles Around This Town"
#9 Country Airplay, #52 Hot 100
I just found out that Kacey Musgraves was the person who encouraged Maren Morris to follow her in moving from Texas to Nashville, I think that's such a cool story because I love both of them. And "Circles Around This Town" is sort of a fond look back to Morris's early days in Nashville from the vantage point of being successful and established a decade later (made with a couple of fairly un-Nashville collaborators, Greg Kurstin and Julia Michaels).
14. Ingrid Andress f/ Sam Hunt - "Wishful Drinking"
#4 Country Airplay, #47 Hot 100
"Wishful Drinking" also had some fairly non-country people working behind the scenes, it was co-written by ascendant R&B star Lucky Daye and pop singer JP Saxe (ex of Julia MIchaels). I like to imagine Lucky Daye filling in for Sam Hunt to sing this with Ingrid Andress at a festival or awards show someday.
15. Justin Moore - "With A Woman You Love"
#1 Country Airplay, #59 Hot 100
I think that Justin Moore is oddly the one artist I've featured in my year-end country lists almost every year since I started doing these a decade ago. But honestly, I think he's one of the best male vocalists in Nashville today, and I enjoy his rousing uptempo stuff like "With A Woman You Love" the most.
16. Gabby Barrett - "Pick Me Up"
#11 Country Airplay, #69 Hot 100
I made mixed feelings about the hits from Gabby Barrett's 2020 debut Goldmine, but I love the current single from the album's 2021 deluxe edition, which feels a bit more easygoing, a bit more emotive, a bit more old-fashioned country.
17. Scotty McCreery - "Damn Strait"
#1 Country Airplay, #32 Hot 100
I was amused to see "Damn Strait" and "Pick Me Up" cross paths on the Country Airplay chart earlier this year because they're both songs by "American Idol" alums that reference George Strait in the chorus. But Strait is cheering Gabby Barrett up, and while he's bumming McCreery out by reminding him of an ex.
18. Cole Swindell - "She Had Me At Heads Carolina"
#1 Country Airplay, #16 Hot 100
George Strait is definitely still the most frequently namechecked artist in contemporary country lyrics, but nostalgia for '90s country is becoming a pretty major recurring theme. And one of this year's biggest hits revolves around a karaoke night crush that sings Jo Dee Messina's 1996 hit "Heads Carolina, Tails California." Naturally, Messina embraced the tribute to her debut single, appearing on a remix of Swindell's song and singing it with him at the CMAs last month.
19. Luke Combs - "The Kind Of Love We Make"
#2 Country Airplay, #8 Hot 100
Luke Combs has been on a historic run the last few years, the first artist to hit #1 on country radio with his first 14 singles. But his 15th single "The Kind of Love We Make" recently broke the streak when "She Had Me At Heads Carolina" blocked it from #1, even though the song was streaming so well that it was Combs's second top 10 hit on the Hot 100.
20. Jelly Roll - "Son Of A Sinner"
#7 Country Airplay, #31 Hot 100
Jelly Roll is a white rapper from Tennessee who was in a group with Lil Wyte on Hypnotize Minds a decade ago. But his last album crossed over to hard rock radio last year with "Dead Man Walking," and this year he crossed over again, to country radio, with "Son Of A Sinner." The rap-to-rock-to-country career arc has of course been done by Kid Rock, but Jelly Roll sounds like a much more credible country singer to me, it's an excellent song.
The 10 Worst Country Radio Hits of 2022:
1. Jason Aldean - "Trouble With A Heartbreak"
2. Lee Brice - "Soul"
3. Morgan Wallen - "You Proof"
4. Luke Bryan - "Country On"
5. Frank Ray - "Country'd Look Good On You"
6. Dustin Lynch - "Party Mode"
7. Walker Hayes - "AA"
8. Thomas Rhett f/ Riley Green - "Half Of Me"
9. Jake Owen - "Best Thing Since Backroads"
10. HARDY - "Give Heaven Some Hell"
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on Wednesday, December 07, 2022 at 2:01 PM.
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