The 20 Best Country Radio Hits of 2024
I did the rap list earlier in the week, now onto country. Here's the Spotify playlist:
1. Ella Langley f/ Riley Green - "You Look Like You Love Me"
#7 Country Airplay, #30 Hot 100
This song, with its spoken verses and sung chorus, easily could've been an unsuccessful experiment. But I think it's the chemistry between Langley and Green's voices, both of them Alabama natives with charming drawls, that really makes it work.
2. Chayce Beckham - "23"
#1 Country Airplay, #45 Hot 100
"American Idol" has been a reality TV ghost town with none of its once mighty impact on the music industry for a long time now, but 2021 winner Chayce Beckham beat the odds. He's the only person to ever win the show with an original song, and after three years that song became a genuine hit, and he's not the only one of the last 5 "Idol" winners to release an album. I hope he keeps beating the odds and has a long career, "23" is a great song.
3. Beyonce - "Texas Hold 'Em"
#33 Country Airplay, #1 Hot 100
For those of us who love country music and love Beyonce's music, 2024 was a pretty exciting year, but I'm not sure if it was much more than a weird novelty to people who are only into one or the other. As successful as Cowboy Carter was, Beyonce got zero CMA nominations this year, and "Texas Hold 'Em" actually did worse on country radio than other radio formats (#7 on pop radio and #19 on R&B radio). So it feels a little like Nashville was put to a test and failed, because "Texas Hold 'Em" sounded great on country radio the handful of times I did hear it, I wish it had been embraced more. One of the highlights of my year was interviewing Raphael Saadiq and I got to shed some light on what he did on "Texas Hold 'Em," the first Hot 100 #1 of his long career.
4. Post Malone f/ Morgan Wallen - "I Had Some Help"
#1 Country Airplay, #1 Hot 100
As the cursed union of two White guys who were both caught saying the N word on camera, I'd like to oppose "I Had Some Help" on principle, especially because of the optics of Post Malone thriving in his country crossover in ways that Beyonce did not. But I have to admit, it's easily one of the catchiest songs either of these mooks has ever made. This song's lyrics make more sense as a duet between two people arguing about their relationship with each other than as two guys scolding two different women, so I have chosen to queer the text.
5. Ashley Cooke - "Your Place"
#2 Country Airplay, #80 Hot 100
I was rooting for "Your Place" from the first time I heard it, and loved seeing it climb all the way to #2. Kind of insane that Big Loud hasn't released a follow-up single, though, women already have it hard enough on country radio, so it's pretty frustrating when labels don't capitalize on the ones that do get a hit. At least she guested on a Brantley Gilbert song that also charted.
6. Parker McCollum - "Burn It Down"
#1 Country Airplay, #42 Hot 100
It's frustrating to me sometimes how much slower the country radio charts move compared to other formats. "Burn It Down" was released as a single in spring 2023, I wrote about how much I liked it here in October of that year, and then it finally hit #1 in April 2024. I didn't like Parker McCollum's voice much at first, but he's had so many good singles in a row now that it's growing on me.
7. Jackson Dean - "Heavens To Betsy"
#43 Country Airplay
Jackson Dean's "Fearless (Echo)" was kind of a casualty of country radio's slow way of doing things, it spent 68 weeks on the chart but still just fell short of becoming a top 10 hit. I hope his new single fares better, I've always rooted for Jackson Dean as a Maryland guy who's got a couple Baltimore indie rock guys in his band, especially after interviewing him in 2023, really seems like a good dude.
8. Lainey Wilson - "Hang Tight Honey"
#13 Country Airplay, #61 Hot 100
Lainey Wilson's biggest hits have tended to be slower songs, so I respect that she came out of the gate with a fast one as the lead single for Whirlwind, my favorite country album of 2024.
9. Dasha - "Austin"
#8 Country Airplay, #18 Hot 100
Country music tends to be notoriously reluctant to embrace artists from other genres, but the floodgates really opened this year, and I would argue the effect was largely positive. Case in point: California singer Dasha Novotny was plugging away at making pop music for a couple years before she made "Austin" and immediately had a viable career in country.
10. Shaboozey - "A Bar Song (Tipsy)"
#1 Country Airplay, #1 Hot 100
Shaboozey is another country outsider -- 10 years ago he was basically making Soundcloud rap -- but he'd been established enough in country by 2024 to land two guest spots on Beyonce's Cowboy Carter, which he quickly followed up with a solo single interpolating J-Kwon's 2004 hit "Tipsy" that has become a historically huge chart smash, poetically tying Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road" as the longest-running Hot 100 #1 ever (a tie it may break soon if Mariah Carey or Brenda Lee doesn't stop it). Some days "A Bar Song" really irritates me and reminds me of, like, the acoustic covers of "Gin and Juice" and "Boyz-n-the-Hood" that were big on filesharing services in the early 2000s, but its success is still kinda cool. I hope J-Kwon cashed out big time on this.
11. Kassi Ashton - "Called Crazy"
#32 Country Airplay
Kassi Ashton has had a couple good minor hits on country radio over the past few years and her recent album Made From The Dirt is probably the best country debut album I heard this year, I hope she's just getting started right now.
12. Jordan Davis - "Tuscon Too Late"
#1 Country Airplay, #71 Hot 100
Jordan Davis is kind of an amiable unassuming guy who hasn't been hyped up as a major star, and went five years between albums just releasing EPs. But pretty much every single he's released has been a top 5 hit and it really feels like he should be acknowledged as a serious hitmaker at this point.
13. Bryan Martin - "We Ride"
#4 Country Airplay, #56 Hot 100
I like that country is one place where grizzled guys in their 30s can become stars, and Bryan Martin was an oil rig worker, a bull rider, a football player before he released a couple albums and "We Ride" became his first hit.
14. Jelly Roll - "Halfway To Hell"
#1 Country Airplay, #48 Hot 100
Jelly Roll has quickly become really popular and really overexposed, even outselling Rod Wave in a big boy chart battle for the ages, and at this point I think he already has more hits that suck than good ones. But I like "Halfway To Hell," I'll put it in the good pile with "Son of a Sinner" and "Need A Favor."
15. Eric Church - "Darkest Hour (Helene Edit)"
#25 Country Airplay
Eric Church is a very mainstream guy who makes very accessible records, and even this year he appeared on a #1 hit by Morgan Wallen, but by modern Nashville standards Church takes creative risks and carries himself like an iconoclast. And with his polarizing Stagecoach set this year and this really beautiful, offbeat charity single that he released after the part of North Carolina he's from was hit hard by Hurricane Helene, I'm excited to hear what he does next.
16. Megan Moroney - "Am I Okay?"
#31 Country Airplay, #63 Hot 100
It really irritates me how this song mutes the word "bed" in a line that couldn't be anything but "good in bed" (even on the album version!). Like that's a pretty mild innuendo to censor in earnest, and way too mild to be playfully coy about. Otherwise, though, this hits
17. Dierks Bentley - "American Girl"
#22 Country Airplay, # Hot 100
Classic rock still looms large over mainstream country -- this year Chris Young got a big hit out of pasting the guitar riff from David Bowie's "Rebel Rebel" over a mediocre new song, "Young Love & Saturday Nights." But I always like hearing country songs that remind me a little of Tom Petty, and this year's Petty Country: A Country Music Celebration of Tom Petty had some lovely covers.
18. Justin Moore - "This Is My Dirt"
#4 Country Airplay, #96 Hot 100
I'm fond of saying Justin Moore is one of country's greatest contemporary vocalists -- he did a great job with "Here Comes My Girl" on Petty Country. And I'm really happy Moore released his first normal length album in five years in 2024, after a couple of weird 8-song mini-albums that seemed like his label was being really timid with an artist who's got enough top 5 singles for a greatest hits album.
19. Marshmello & Kane Brown - "Miles On It"
#1 Country Airplay, #15 Hot 100
As a biracial country star who kind of stumbled before while making overt attempt at crossover success -- I still cringe thinking about him performing the Mike Posner-written "Grand" at the VMAs -- Kane Brown could've gotten really left behind in the year of "Texas Hold 'Em" and "A Bar Song." Instead, he linked up with the EDM guy who wears a giant marshmellow on his head and made a track that sounds equally good on country radio and pop radio.
20. Luke Combs - "Ain't No Love In Oklahoma"
#1 Country Airplay, #13 Hot 100
With his "Fast Car" cover becoming a giant across-the-board hit, Luke Combs seems second only to Morgan Wallen in terms of the current generation of country stars. Then he made the unexpected move of releasing his fifth album, Fathers & Sons, with barely any promotion or advance notice and no radio singles, just before Father's Day, which I think is odd because it hardly feels like an uncommercial move given the music he's had success with so far. In any event, he still topped the charts with a lead single from the pretty good all-country soundtrack album for the blockbuster move Twisters.
The 10 Worst Country Radio Hits of 2024:
1. Dustin Lynch f/ Jelly Roll - "Chevrolet"
2. Morgan Wallen - "Love Somebody"
3. Hardy - "Truck Bed"
4. George Birge - "Mind On You"
5. Koe Wetzel f/ Jessie Murph - "High Road"
6. Jason Aldean - "Let Your Boys Be Country"
7. Tim McGraw - "One Bad Habit"
8. Bailey Zimmerman - "Where It Ends"
9. Warren Zeiders - "Pretty Little Poison"
10. Chase Matthew - "Love You Again"
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on Thursday, December 05, 2024 at 12:12 PM.
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