Genre

Country

7.8
Ella Langley

Be Her

Ella Langley turns the spotlight on herself for once, comparing her own chaos to an idealized, grounded version of a woman she isn't — the most vulnerable thing on Dandelion, and it holds up.

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7.3
Morgan Wallen

Been by Now

Morgan Wallen's lead single premiered at No. 2 the week country took all five spots on the Hot 100 for the first time ever — a strong, if not adventurous, signal for his next album.

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8.0
Stella Lefty

Boston

Stella Lefty's breakout single interpolates Noah Kahan's 'Stick Season' and is now, factually, the highest-charting song called 'Boston' ever released.

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7.0
Kacey Musgraves

Deeper Well

Kacey Musgraves trades Golden Hour's disco shimmer for something quieter and harder to grade — a title track about cutting out what isn't serving you, delivered so gently it risks not registering at all.

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4.8
River Cain

Hell Out of Me

The title track anchoring the River Cain hoax is a competently assembled mainstream-country pastiche with nothing underneath it -- which, once you know the artist doesn't exist, is exactly the problem.

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8.8
Carrie Underwood

How Great Thou Art

Carrie Underwood and Vince Gill's 2011 televised duet went viral within days -- and Underwood liked the moment enough to record the hymn again, a decade later, on her own terms.

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7.6
Ella Langley

I Can't Love You Anymore

Ella Langley and Morgan Wallen's duet about a couple too exhausted to either fix things or leave is the rare bonus-track single that earns its own chart run rather than just riding two names.

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6.3
Taylor Swift

I Knew It, I Knew You

Taylor Swift's Toy Story 5 tie-in debuted at No. 1 on the strength of the franchise and the name attached to it, not because it's a top-tier Swift single — a pleasant three minutes doing very little most of her catalog hasn't already done better.

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7.6
Alan Jackson

It Is Well with My Soul

Alan Jackson's Precious Memories take is a country singer getting out of a hymn's way -- plain, unhurried, and recorded for a funeral before it was recorded for an album.

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Greatest of All Time!
Johnny Cash

Ring of Fire

Throwback Thursday, 1963: June Carter wrote it, her sister recorded it first, and a dream about mariachi horns turned it into a Johnny Cash record.

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7.5
Beyoncé

Texas Hold 'Em

Beyoncé became the first Black woman to top Hot Country Songs and the first to reach No. 1 on the Hot 100 with a country record — a genuinely historic single that plays it safer than the history around it suggests.

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7.4
Brandon Lake

The Jesus I Know Now

Brandon Lake and Lainey Wilson's country-worship duet is a comfortable genre crossover rather than a risky one, and comfortable is mostly enough when the songwriting itself holds up.

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