Rolling Stone released what they believe to be the 250 greatest albums of the 21st century so far… and my first question was, “How much love did they give to the country genre?”
Obviously, the list reflects their opinion, and ranges from pop to hip-hop and everything in between. I was interested to see how much country music popped up, and after scrolling through the long list, I discovered that the genre ended up getting 10 spots out of the available 250. And that’s if you include some folk and pop country (and an album that the artist declared wasn’t a country album).
For those bad with math, that means that country makes up around 4% of the list.
As to how Rolling Stone came up with the 250 albums from the year 2000 and on (so far), they mentioned that they “wanted to show as much of the scope of this story as possible,” and did include multiple albums from the same artist on the list (both Beyoncé and Taylor Swift appear four times each). So without further ado, here are the albums that fall into the country music category and where they ranked on Rolling Stone’s list:
247: Purgatory (2017) – Tyler Childers
207: Hero (2016) – Maren Morris
130: By The Way, I Forgive You (2018) – Brandi Carlile
126: Cowboy Carter (2024) – Beyoncé
121: Chief (2011) – Eric Church
103: Traveller (2015) – Chris Stapleton
79: Southeastern (2013) – Jason Isbell
48: Platinum (2014) – Miranda Lambert
43: Metamodern Sounds in Country Music (2014) – Sturgill Simpson
40: Golden Hour (2018) – Kacey Musgraves
There you have it… saved you a lot of scrolling. Those are the 10 country albums that appear on Rolling Stone’s “250 Greatest Albums of the 21st Century.” Feel like any were left out? Or that some of the albums that are included should be shifted around a bit?
If you were to talk about commercially successful albums, Luke Combs’ This One’s For You or What You See Is What You Get and Morgan Wallen’s Dangerous: The Double Album would like a word. One could also make an argument for Grammy-winning country records like Lainey Wilson’s Bell Bottom Country or George Strait’s Troubador to appear on the listical as well.
Then since I’m a big Eric Church fan, I’d feel comfortable throwing Mr. Misunderstood, Carolina or Sinners Like Me out there as list-worthy. I’m glad Chief made the list… but it should have been a lot higher than 121. Hell, it probably should have represented the top country album on the entire list. That honor instead went to Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour (somehow I could sense some of you readers out there rolling your eyes reading that).
There’s no doubt that the country music genre was underrepresented on the list. That being said, most of the country projects that were included were great picks (I personally appreciated the love shown for Sturgill Simpson). And hey… at least there weren’t any “Bro Country” albums from Florida Georgia Line on there. That’s a plus.
Just in case you were wondering (and wanted to save some time scrolling) here are the Top 5 Albums of the 21st Century according to Rolling Stone:
5) Folkore (2020) – Taylor Swift
4) Stankonia (2000) – OutKast
3) Blonde (2016) – Frank Ocean
2) Kid A (2000) – Radiohead
1) Lemonade (2016) – Beyoncé
