We’ve run down the Best Country Albums of 2025 So Far, now it’s time to consider the best songs. What we’re looking for here are legitimate Song of the Year contenders, not catchy ditties or toe tappers.
The Saving Country Music Top 25 Playlist is built to keep you informed on all the best songs and albums coming out right here, right now in country and roots music. It’s available on most all streaming formats.
It’s fiddle. It’s steel guitar. It’s songs about raising hell. It’s sentimental songs about the most important things in life. Everybody’s all behind Zach Top, but Josh’s been doing 90s traditional country since the ’90s.
In 2022, something happened at the Grand Ole Opry that is only fair to label as historic. More so than any other year in its nearly 100-year existence, the coveted Grand Ole Opry debut was doled out to deserving artists from across the panorama, checking off bucket list items, populating glowing resume points…
After playing a KOKEfest just north of Austin last weekend, Josh Ward was horseback riding on Sunday, August 8th when the accident occurred. At first Ward reportedly tried to “walk it off,” but suffering massive internal bleeding, eventually emergency help was called.
The Texas music community is small but mighty, and relies on many people behind-the-scenes to get the stars to the shows and the gear on the stage in Texas and beyond. One such individual who was beloved throughout the community was known to many simply as “Frank” or “Super Frank.”
Randall Clay had recently received some of the widest recognition of his career when Ashley McBryde cut the songs “American Scandal,” “Tired of Being Happy,” and “El Dorado” co-written by Clay for her recent album ‘Girl Going Nowhere.’ Clay also wrote or co-wrote songs for William Clark Green, Josh Ward, Hannah Aldridge, & Curtis Braly.
The last time we were talking about Cody Jinks in concert, he was getting carted off stage in an ambulance for what ultimately was determined to be a bad bout of vertigo. This weekend (July 6th & 7th), the only hint of issue for Cody Jinks while performing at the Whitewater Amphitheater was perhaps the dark sunglasses he was sporting.
There’s no mistaking Josh Ward as anything but country. We’re not talking about close approximations or the blending of styles in some way. When you think traditional country in the style of classic George Strait, this is Josh Ward. It’s steel guitar, it’s fiddle, it’s twangy lead guitar overlapping lyrics of heartache, sin, and redemption.
Veteran’s Day 2017 (11-11) saw Cody Jinks in Boerne, TX near San Antonio, playing to a capacity crowd at The Roundup, with a special tribute to veterans, and for a hero who recently made national headlines. The guests of honor for the night were service members from VFW Post 688. The show was also attended by Johnnie Langendorff.
Call it cautious or guarded optimism, but after the abomination that was the 2016 Houston Rodeo musical lineup led by folks such as Luke Bryan, Pitbull, and Florida Georgia Line, and where only one artist with Texas ties and only one female performer were booked (and both were Miranda Lambert), they couldn’t go any lower, that’s for sure.
On Monday, the official lineup for the 2016 Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo was “announced” by astronaut Scott Kelly from the International Space Station. Perhaps the aeronautical histrionics were a bid to distract everyone back on Earth from the fact that this year’s lineup is the most mundane, most mainstream-centric and generic pop tart Kellogg’s cereal assemblage of plastic talent ever accrued on this beautiful blue planet.
Houston traditional country artist Josh Ward was involved in a tragic boating accident on Tuesday. Josh was treated and released from Conroe Regional Hospital for a fractured elbow, but multiple other injuries, as well as two fatalities and a missing person are also being reported as part of the multi-boat incident. The accident happened on Lake Conroe, just north of Houston.