100 Best Americana & Country Songs of 2018 - Part 5 (#20-1)

by Julian Spivey

20. "The Joke" by Brandi Carlile 

​Brandi Carlile’s “The Joke” would make the perfect song for an anti-bullying campaign. The emotional song about being yourself and forgetting about and ignoring the haters is a soaring anthem with a powerhouse vocal by Carlile. It’s a perfect song for today’s world. Carlile told NPR: “There are so many people feeling misrepresented. So many people feeling unloved. Boys feeling marginalized and forced into this kind of awkward shapes or masculinity that they do or don’t belong in. Little girls who got so excited for the last election and are dealing with the fallout. The song is just for people that feel under-represented, unloved or illegal.”

19. "People Get Old" by Lori McKenna 

​Lori McKenna’s “People Get Old” is one of the biggest tearjerkers of the year, but also a tribute to those we love dearest. It’s about the cruelty of time and how you frequently don’t even see or feel those closest to you growing old until you wake up one day and they just are. It’s a track that’s going to make anyone with aged or aging parents choke up a bit. McKenna wrote it about her now 83-year-old father and said to Rolling Stone: “In so many ways I still remember him as a younger man, doing family trips and all that. I love nostalgic songs, so this one let me start picking part the parts of my childhood I remembered and wanted to put in a song, like going down memory lane a bit.”

18. "Knockin' On Your Screen Door" by John Prine 

​John Prine makes not having anybody to spend time with or any money to do anything with almost fun in “Knockin’ On Your Screen Door.” It’s something that only Prine with his freewheeling, devil-may-care attitude and self-deprecating humor could probably do. At just over two minutes, “Knockin’ On Your Screen Door” is a blast of fresh air, especially considering Prine hadn’t recorded an album of new material in more than a decade. At 72, Prine – a recent nominee for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame of all things – hasn’t lost a step. 

17. "Country Music's Dead" by Mike and the Moonpies & John Baumann 

Mike and the Moonpies and John Baumann sure do make the death of country music sound rather fine. In “Country Music’s Dead” the band and Baumann poke fun of the many who claim that country music is dead, which is a claim you’d probably believe if you only listened to the mainstream. Mike and the Moonpies singer Mike Harmeier told Saving Country Music: “The song is about being yourself and staying in your lane. We wanted to make a statement about how real country records are still being made and how the bands making that music can still be found playing to 10 people in some dive bar.” 

16. "Road Crew" by Mike and the Moonpies 

​Mike and the Moonpies “Road Crew” is one of the most infectious songs of the year. You’ll instantly want to sing along and dance to this ode to the underappreciated, unsung heroes of touring – the men and women who help bands get from show to show – setting up the instruments, selling the merchandise and driving the van. It’s one helluva boogie too. 

15. "Gulf Moon" by Kenny Chesney

​Kenny Chesney has shown he has a knack for picking great songs from incredibly talented and under-the-radar songwriters over the last couple of decades and choosing John Baumann’s “Gulf Moon” for his latest release Songs For the Saints continues this trend. The song about living the Gulf life is one of the best written songs of the year and Chesney puts his smooth beach bum sound on it to give us a visual of the whole thing. It’s the perfect melding of lyrics and production. 

14. "Every Time I Hear That Song" by Brandi Carlile 

​Brandi Carlile’s By The Way, I Forgive You was without a doubt one of the finest Americana albums of the year. The song that gives the album its title, “Every Time I Hear That Song” is one of the most beautiful melodies I heard all year. The track recounts a failed relationship and how the narrator has gotten over it and moved on with her life but is reminded of it every time she hears a certain song. Carlile, who co-wrote the song with Phil and Tim Hanseroth, has gorgeous vocals to go along with the mellow melody.

13. "You Better Hope You Die Young" by Hellbound Glory & Tanya Tucker 

​My favorite duet, by far, in 2018 was the perfect melding of Leroy Virgil’s and Tanya Tucker’s voices on Hellbound Glory’s “You Better Hope You Die Young.” The cautionary tale of excess and hard living is country as hell – notice the crying fiddle throughout – and these two simply knock it out of the park. “You Better Hope You Die Young” comes off as well-earned advice in the hands of these two and not overwrought preaching, because you can tell by the way they’re singing it that they know this from experience. 

12. "Tough Folks" by American Aquarium 

​“Tough Folks” is a political song, but it’s not one that points fingers at anybody or casts blame. American Aquarium’s B.J. Barham sings: “Last November I saw firsthand what desperation makes good people do,” referring to the 2016 election of President Donald Trump and how many believed or at least hoped the election of a “non-politician” would lead to some actual change. Barham sings: “Life ain’t fair/saddle up, boy, and see it through/tough times don’t last/but tough folks do.” That’s a modern day John Mellencamp sentiment if I’ve ever heard one. We’ll get through this. 

11. "Heart Like a Wheel" by Eric Church 

​Eric Church set out to capture new sounds on his 2018 release Desperate Man, a daunting task indeed, but he certainly didn’t fail. The soulful love ballad “Heart Like a Wheel” of two people who don’t seem like they should be paired together but can’t get enough of each other was my personal favorite track off the album and sounds like throwback roots rock. It also doesn’t hurt that the simplistic chorus is catchy as hell: “I got a heart like a wheel/baby let’s go/get in this heart like a wheel/and baby let’s roll.” 

10. "Immortal Americans" by Austin Lucas 

​The first verse of “Immortal Americans” stopped me in my tracks the first time I heard it with its terrific imagery that is Springsteen-esque (and there’s no higher compliment in my opinion) of sitting on rooftops and listening to nearby stock car races and the humming of the engines. Lucas told American Songwriter of the song: “This song is dedicated to the outsiders and freaks who grew up in small towns and the rural countrysides of America, the folks who discovered themselves and suffered for it when their identities fell outside of the mainstream.” I feel like he’s singing straight to me. 

9. "Crack the Case" by Dawes 

​Dawes frontman and songwriter Taylor Goldsmith is one of the best songwriters in any genre of music over the last decade. He has a knack for imagery and detail that probably makes many of his fellow songwriters jealous. “Crack the Case” is Dawes at their most hopeful with a piano-based ballad of trying to crack the case of what truly makes people dislike one another and why can’t we all just get along. The final chorus, which tackles people who view fellow men as their enemy, is my favorite with lines like: “Countless revisions of history/trying to tell us the future/between each commercial break/I wanna call off the cavalry/declare no winners and losers/and forgive our shared mistakes/you can pick the time and place/maybe that will crack the case.” It won’t be easy, but we should all try to crack that case. 

8. "Old Hickory" by Old Crow Medicine Show 

​Every Old Crow Medicine Show album has at least one track that when you first hear it you know is immediately going to become one of the band’s greatest hits and for their latest album Volunteer that song is “Old Hickory.” “Old Hickory” tells the tale of a flatwoods boy named Virgil Lee, who was the greatest musician for miles around, but sees his flame burn out before he hits it big. “Old Hickory” contains one of my absolute favorite choruses of the year with: “Old hickory/shading the porch of a house that’s been torn down/there ain’t nothin’ that’s left but the memory/and that long tall, scraggily, bitternut old hickory.” “Old Hickory” proves that Ketch Secor and Critter Fuqua can write a story song with the best of them. 

7. "Cabinet Door" by Anderson East

​Anderson East’s “Cabinet Door” is the biggest tearjerker of the year and will rip your heart right out of your chest with its story of an elderly widowed man trying to adjust to life without his love of 52 years. Every single line of this song is devastating, but the one that truly gets me the most as a baseball fan is how he misses watching the Atlanta Braves (my favorite team) games with his wife. It’s one of the best representations of grief I’ve ever heard. 

6. "Girl Goin' Nowhere" by Ashley McBryde 

​One of the greatest country music moments of last year was when singer-songwriter Ashley McBryde made her Grand Ole Opry debut and performed the driven-to-succeed anthem “Girl Goin’ Nowhere,” which she wrote when a teacher back home in Arkansas told her to quit her far-fetched dreams of being a songwriter. Thankfully McBryde has a stubborn streak and boy did she ever make it big in 2018 with her debut album Girl Goin’ Nowhere. As she sings that’s “not bad for a girl goin’ nowhere.” 

5. "You Never Really Knew My Mind" by Chris Cornell 

​It saddens me that one of the best songs of the year is a collaboration between two musical legends who are no longer with us. The song is “You Never Really Knew My Mind” performed by Chris Cornell (of grunge rock legends Soundgarden fame) and written as a long unpublished poem by Johnny Cash. It’s not the first time Cornell and Cash have been linked. Cash included a terrific cover of Soundgarden’s “Rusty Cage” on one of his American Recordings releases in the ‘90s. Cash wrote the poem in 1967 and after hearing Cornell’s take on the song, I just can’t imagine anybody else performing it. Cornell gets the emotion of the words perfectly and conveys them in one of the year’s best vocals. I hope somewhere Cornell and Cash are collaborating in person. 

4. "Thoughts and Prayers" by Will Hoge 

​It’s incredibly unfortunate, but Will Hoge’s “Thoughts & Prayers” might be the song that most summarizes 2018 and the world we currently live in. It’s a track about the bullshit line politicians seem to throw out every time there’s a mass shooting in this country – which is seemingly a monthly thing these days. Hoge says what many of us in this country are thinking: “we don’t give a damn about your thoughts and prayers.” Maybe one of these days the politicians who make the laws for this country will care more about human life than receiving money from the National Rifle Association, but until that glorious day comes, we’ll need songs like “Thoughts & Prayers” by artists like Will Hoge. 

3. "Summer's End" by John Prine 

​John Prine is one of the greatest lyricists of all-time and songs like “Angel From Montgomery,” “Hello in There” and “Sam Stone” prove it. “Summer’s End,” from Prine’s first album of original material in more than a decade, is one of the 10 best songs he’s ever written. The song, which was recently nominated for a Grammy Award, is simply devastating, while also being nostalgic. The song on its face could be the telling of someone hoping to be reunited with a loved one – be it spouse, significant other, family member or friend – they haven’t seen in an awful long time. For someone who’s 72 years old like Prine, summer could also be a stand-in for time and life passing by so quickly. The music video, which was released in September, adds an even more devastating take to the song as it takes on America’s opioid crisis featuring a grandfather and his granddaughter who lost a child and mother to the epidemic. 

2. "The World's On Fire" by American Aquarium 

​I’m not sure there was a song in 2018 that I felt deep down in my core like American Aquarium’s “The World’s on Fire.” Songwriter B.J. Barham recounts how he and his partner felt in the direct aftermath of the election of President Donald Trump and how it seemingly turned American values upside down. My favorite moment in the song is how Barham sings with optimism about his soon-to-be-born daughter and how if anybody builds a wall in her journey to bust right through it. The world is on fire indeed, but I love the optimism of the song’s chorus about not giving up or giving in and seeing to it that one day the fire is put out. 

1. "The Mother" by Brandi Carlile

​Brandi Carlile’s “The Mother” has been one of my favorite songs of the year from the first time I heard it all the way back in February. The track tells of how a child can completely change your life, even turn it upside down, but in the end just how rewarding it can be. Carlile wrote the song for her first daughter Evangeline, who’s now 4 years old. The song is raw and honest and gets into the early stages of parenthood like most songs never could. It’s soul-baring if I’ve ever heard it and that’s the mark of a damn good artist. Few artists were as good as Carlile in 2018.