Country music has seen an uprise in the past few years. The genre saw its biggest growth in 30 years in 2023, with an increase of listeners over 20% in one year. The lines between country music and other genres are blurring, with artists like Beyonce and Post Malone blending sounds from several genres. Other artists, like Morgan Wallen and Zach Bryan, have more pop-country and hip-hop sounds, as well as indie-folk.
Beyonce released her album “Cowboy Carter” in 2024. USA Today states “[The] album became a catalyst for the renewed spotlight on Black country artists and the genre’s Black roots.”
“Cowboy Carter” was a huge success, making history as the first time a Black woman led the Top Country Albums chart. The album’s tour became the highest-grossing country tour in history, earning over $400 million. The project also received critical acclaim and a Grammy for Album of the Year.
At the same time, some feel that the Grammy was unwarrnted and view “Cowboy Carter” as a “vanity album,” rather than a real piece of music. Oliver Anthony, a country singer-songwriter who became famous for his song “Rich Men North of Richmond” (a critique of government policies and working-class struggles), also had a song which became a big success, coming at number one on the Billboard charts in 2023 and earned over 486 million Spotify streams.
Anthony posted a video to YouTube on December 4, 2024, stating, “[Cowboy Carter] makes me just want to throw up … It’s just total cringe,” he said. “It represents how degenerative our society has become, that a song like a Beyoncé version of ‘Jolene’ can come out and anybody [will] actually listen to it and think it’s not just complete trash.”
Other country artists have recently dominated the charts as well, including Morgan Wallen. In 2025, Wallen released his new album “I’m The Problem,” which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, the largest of 2025. “I’m the Problem” was the first album by a male artist to spend its first five weeks at No. 1 since Wallen’s own album “One Thing at a Time,” released in 2023.
Although country music as a whole genre has changed in the past 20 years, it still has a prominence in today’s music scene.
