Nashville could really use a win when it comes to these national rankings and reports.
Every time Music City is included in some sort of wide spread survey or ranking, it doesn’t go well. At the very least, it doesn’t ever feel like it does. That being said, Nashville continues to be one of the premiere tourist destinations in the United States. 17.4 million people visited Nashville in 2025, and that annual visitor number is expected to gradually increase in the next couple of years.
People evidently can’t get enough of the pedal taverns, artist-owned bars, hot chicken, and $15 beers.
And tourists evidently aren’t paying attention to all of the negative headlines that surrounds Nashville. For one, the city was ranked as one of the worst 30 places in the entire world when it comes to traffic. Something called the INRIX 2025 Traffic Scorecard took a look at congestion over 900 cities across 36 countries, and Nashville fell among the worst 30 on the globe, and one of top 15 traffic-congested cities in the United States.
Take a trip to Nashville, and its famous Lower Broadway area, and you’ll feel that congestion.
Then there was another, not-so-nice ranking from InsureAndGo that ranked Nashville as No. 4 on the list of the world’s Top 15 Tourist Trap Cities. They gave “Music City” an authenticity score of 3.8 out of ONE HUNDRED, which is just diabolical. But when you hear their explanation, it kind of makes sense:
“Known as the ‘Country Music Capital of the World,’ Nashville has been a standout destination for those who want to get immersed in the music genre’s history for quite some time. However, the famous Broadway strip has lost a bit of its shine the more it curates for visitors. Branded bars and polished venues overshadow the more organic local music scene, contributing to its lower authenticity score according to those who’ve been there.”
Only Chicago, Venice, and Las Vegas ranked higher than Nashville on the list.
In the spirit of those two rankings, we’ve got yet another one that paints Music City in a negative light… and this one is a bit more serious. The American Lung Association’s annual State of the Air report gave Nashville an “F grade” for its ozone smog. In other words, the town known for its Honky Tonks is suffering from worsening air pollution.
And unfortunately, that kind of air quality is the one that gets worse when it’s hotter outside, or if there’s more traffic. Good thing Nashville, Tennessee doesn’t suffer from muggy, humid summers, or never-ending traffic (*cough* that’s sarcasm *cough*). Children, teenagers, elderly and those with asthma struggle the most with air quality issues resulting from increased ozone smog.
Though all of that is obviously bad news for Music City, it wasn’t a total loss for Nashville in the eyes of the American Lung Association. While Davidson County did receive a failing grade for ozone smog, it earned an “A grade” when for daily measure of particle pollution (usually caused by wild fires and diesel engines, among other things).
