Think What They Call “Country” is Off? Check Out Rock

We spend a lot of time (arguably too much) kvetching about the doings on Billboard’s country music charts. Their permissive approach to basically anything that wants to be called “country” in fear of being labeled as gatekeepers has made these once industry-leading charts feel pretty obsolete to the average country consumer. Compounding the problem was the decision by Billboard a few years ago to put their weekly charts behind paywalls, removing the fan from the experience, and basically relegating their charts to a mechanism of the music industry itself. Where conversations and interest in Billboard’s charts used to be a weekly occurrence for many fans, now there’s barely any conversation at all until the year-end charts are published publicly. But as bad of an assessment as one might come to about what’s unfolding on the country charts, nothing compares to the monstrosity that is transpiring over in rock. Recently Billboard revealed the top 10 “rock” albums for 2025, and if you’re incensed about what’s labeled “country,” you’ll go bonkers over what is qualifying as rock. Billboard’s Top 10 Rock Albums for 2025: 10. Olivia Rodrigo – Guts 9. Hozier – Hozier8. Zach Bryan – The Great American Bar Scene7. Zach Bryan – Zach Bryan 6. Taylor Swift – folklore 5. Elton John – Diamonds4. Zach Bryan – American Heartbreak3. Fleetwood Mac – Rumours2. Noah Kahan – Stick Season1. Billie Eilish – Hit Me Hard and SoftIs there anyone in any universe that believes that the Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo albums are rock? Does anyone except for Billboard consider Zach Bryan a rock artist? Similar to Noah Kahan and Hozier, Zach Bryan is a mostly acoustic-based singer/songwriter, even if he’s reached the arena level. This should be considered what it is: Contemporary folk, which is an increasingly commercially dominant genre that needs to be recognized as such by music institutions. Taylor Swift’s folklore could also fit in that category. Another shocking realization is that not a single one of these titles was even released in 2025. Hozier’s self-titled album is from 2014—over a decade ago. Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors was released in 1977.This chart says so much about the implosion of rock music, the permissive nature of Billboard with their charts, and the failing of the industry to be able to break new artists irrespective of genre—something that plagued music in 2025. But you can’t legitimately assert that there aren’t actual rock bands out there releasing relevant music. They’re just being overshadowed by the inclusion of megastars with non-rock albums on the rock charts. Even with the paywalling of charts, being able to brag about your album placing high on Billboard might be the momentum a band or artist needs to break through. But how can they when the same superstar names are dominating multiple different genre charts? Just as troubling, when generations look back at the rock charts for 2025 to find who released the greatest albums of the year and don’t even find titles from the same decade, or from artists nobody considers rock, it defeats the purpose. Saving Country Music isn’t especially qualified to commentate on what’s going on in rock music in 2025. But looking at the nominees for the Grammy’s Best Rock Album from this year and listening through, there’s some great actual rock being made. Turnstile, The Deftones, YungBlud, this all sounds like good, relevant rock music. The new Linkin Park album has massive numbers behind it. Haim might be just as much pop as rock, but it still probably qualifies, and much better than Olivia Rodrigo. After looking at what a monstrosity the Billboard rock charts are, somehow country doesn’t look as terrible. And like it or not, the year end country charts look pretty accurate to what’s happening in the genre considering the consumption habits of “country” fans, even if you legitimately question how country the music of Morgan Wallen, Jelly Roll, or Shaboozey is, and point out that Post Malone wasn’t originally a country artist. At least these are albums from 2025 or the previous few years. Billboard’s Top 10 Country Albums for 2025:

10. Zach Top – Cold Beer & Country Music9. Zach Bryan – The Great American Bar Scene8. Zach Bryan – Zach Bryan 7. Zach Bryan – American Heartbreak 6. Saboozey – Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going5. Jelly Roll – Beautifully Broken 4. Post Malone – F-1 Trillion 3. Morgan Wallen – Dangerous: The Double Album2. Morgan Wallen – One Thing at a Time1. Morgan Wallen – I’m The Problem

Why do the doings of the Billboard Rock Albums chart affect us over in country? First, as country fans and advocates, we should want to be good neighbors. We don’t want country or country-adjacent artists charting in rock any more than we want rock and hip-hop artists charting in country. And when you have megastars like Zach Bryan dominating both charts, it lends to worries that all popular music is just becoming one big monogenre. Let rock performers have those slots on rock charts. This then leads us to the issue of Treaty Oak Revival, who just released their latest record West Texas Degenerate. Any slightly knowledgeable music consumer would easily conclude that Treaty Oak’s music is straight up rock. There’s noting country about it; they just happen to be from Texas. In fact, amid criticism of the band being included in country, fans and the band themselves have said they don’t really consider themselves country. It’s their inclusion in country that creates the conflict around the band. So why do Treaty Oak Revival continue to be lumped in with country? It’s because there is no market for rock music to be pushed towards, especially when you have Zach Bryan, Billie Eilish, Taylor Swift, and Olivia Rodrigo presented as the biggest names in the rock world. Perhaps if the end-of-year rock chart only presented rock albums, Treaty Oak Revival’s No Vacancy would have appeared since it continued to be a very strong title from the band through 2025. Treaty Oak Revival’s West Texas Degenerate debuted at #3 on Billboard’s Country Albums chart this week with 26,624 albums and streaming equivalents sold. It was only 160 albums away from coming in at #2 in country behind Morgan Wallen records. The Treaty Oak album also came in at #1 on the Billboard Rock Albums chart, where it obviously belongs. At least Billboard got this particular decision right. But by getting so many other decisions wrong, Billboard is forcing actual rock artists more and more into the country space because rock has so few festivals, barely any radio support, and few playlists and podcasts to support it. Why? Because the genre can’t launch any stars because the genre is being dominated by names outside of it. It’s a doom cycle with country having to pick up the slack. Many people’s conclusion here might be “That is why genre’s don’t matter.” But in the current environment with so much new music flooding onto the streaming services every day, with AI promising to exacerbate this dilemma, and consumers finding it harder by the day to find music that resonates with them, genre and making the American musical catalog more navigable might never have been more important. Add on top of that how new artists can’t break through the noise to find the fans they need and deserve, and it’s an existential crisis for music. Sure, with the onslaught of AI in the offing, we might just be re-arranging the deck chairs before the Titanic sinks. But it sure feels imperative in this moment to stop calling everything everything in music, and start deciding where albums from performers like Zach Bryan, Taylor Swift, and Treaty Oak Revival actually belong, and sticking with it, even if that means creating new charts and designations. This doesn’t mean that in certain rare circumstances, you might have a song or album from a megastar that does deserve to be on two charts at the same time. But when the same big names dominate all the charts irrespective of genre, you have a big problem. – – – – – – – – – – –

Billie Eilish, Fleetwood Mac, Hozier, Jelly Roll, Morgan Wallen, Noah Kahan, Olivia Rodrigo, Post Malone, Shaboozey, Taylor Swift, Treaty Oak Revival, Zach Bryan

The paywalling of the billboard charts is so odd to me. I just to go on and check out the charts and found it interesting. Then the paywall hit and I just can’t and don’t care – so myself and others I’m sure just go look at what’s trending on Spotify, Apple Music etc. billboard is self inducing their own irrelevance in this way.

Don’t get me started on paywalls, because you’re right, Billboard’s paywalling of charts has made them virtually irrelevant to the average music consumer, and Spotify’s streaming numbers are now what dominates conversations. This is what has led to people paying for streams to increase their clout, which in turn has made the entire music industry one big fugazi.

Meanwhile, the internet has become a series of walled gardens and digital ghettos thanks to paywalls, bifurcating and Balkanaizing the American perspective. Artists tout getting features in Rolling Stone, but what good are they when only a 1/4 of the internet can read them? The prevailing theory of why the Turnpike Troubadours didn’t get a Grammy nomination is because all of their feature-length spreads have been published in only one outlet, and behind a paywall. Nobody knows about them.

I get that Billboard needs to make money. But they could ad support the charts and be just fine. But since they’ve insisted on paywalling them and letting anyone and everyone call themselves whatever they want without any curation whatsoever, they are a virtually useless relic of the past.

I have to chuckle where so many journalists think they’re “speaking truth to power” or exercising “activism” when all their stuff is rendered in subscriber-only formats. By definition, you’re sounding off in an echo chamber.

I get that it’s hard for media outlets to make it these days, trust me. But either you care about these topics, the artists, and these causes and want to reach as many souls as possible, or you’re simply morally preening for a constituency.

For Billboard, their charts are their brand. Nobody goes there for insightful commentary. Put the charts behind a paywall, and you render yourself irrelevant.

I have to disagree with both of you on this, Adam and Trigger. I don’t see any irony to a newspaper simultaneously having “Democracy dies in darkness” as a slogan while asking customers to buy the paper, nor do I think that a newspaper charging for its product means it can’t also speak truth to power. When were newspapers ever free? When were magazines? The brief period in time when we had access to full offerings on websites from major outlets was the anomaly, not the other way around. Newspapers have charged for their product for centuries. A yearlong subscription to the Washington Post currently costs $29 for the first year. That’s hardly a price-point that silos them off from society at large and relegates them to “morally preening for a constituency.”

I’d actually argue that a far bigger problem is citizens refusing to support legitimate, local news organizations, and instead expecting everything for free from social media or news aggregators. As a society, we’re getting what we (won’t) pay for. And that, I think, directly mirrors problems we see in the music industry. When consumers will only “support” artists through a monthly Spotify or AppleMusic account instead of buying their albums, going to their shows, buying their merch, etc., it makes it harder for so many artists to make a living off their music, just like it’s nearly impossible for local news outlets to stay solvent. I think we all agree what a shame that is.

To get back to the direct topic of this article and post, however, I do agree with the problematic nature of Billboard charts going behind a paywall, even though its similarly true that they used to accessed through the magazine that you had to pay for. It’s just that, as Michigan Country Music said in his original post, so few people care enough to pay for Billboard access that they’ve managed to make themselves utterly irrelevant to music fans. As Trigger said, they’re just an industry publication now versus being a major cultural talking point like they once were. The paywall obviously isn’t entirely to blame for that, but it sure doesn’t help.

I do think that people should be willing to support their local publications with subscriptions. The problem is that I don’t live in Washington. I don’t live in New York. I don’t live in Salt Lake City where Todd Snider was arrested and hospitalized. And so I can’t go and subscribe to every single local paper just because I want access to one story that I’m trying to report on. Meanwhile, publications like The New York Times and The Washington Post are where this elite discourse happens with national implications, including about country music. There’s a newer article in the NYT about Shaboozey and country music that someone asked me to commentate on just today. I couldn’t read it initially because it was behind a paywall.

I’m all for people directly contributing to publications they feel offer a worthy service to their community. Trust me. But they need to figure out a better system of when to make articles free, what articles to limit—like Billboard with their industry articles, which is not a bad system, while ALL country articles on Rolling Stone are paywalled (but many pop/hip-hop ones aren’t?)—while also being willing to offer ad-supported articles to everyone when they’re important.

Do you not know how to bypass a paywall for an occasional article? That’s what basically everybody else does. It doesn’t stop the fact that people should be paying for journalism. There’s only so far that you can keep a website with multiple employees afloat on nail fungus ads or whatever

Yes, I know certain tricks to get past paywalls or find information in other places. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Most people do not know these tricks. Most people are not going to put the effort out to jump a paywall. They’re simply going to scroll to the next thing in their feed. You severely limit the audience for content with a paywall, and that restricted audience is specifically people who don’t regularly come to your outlet, which are the people you can either integrate into your readership, or persuade to your side of a certain argument, or promote an important artist to.

Honestly, I found the Billboard Country Newsletter formula totally by accident, but it works. I wouldn’t pay to see it every week. Many folks don’t know Country Aircheck is free.
https://www.countryaircheck.com/

This list of “rock” songs is embarrassing. There are so many good bands that are actual rock bands that have put out songs in the last year or two. Look up the band The Warning from Mexico. They just released an album this year and they have been on fire the past few years. How they did not make this list is ridiculous. Halestorm is another real rock band. What are these people smoking. Hell Nickelback is still going strong too.

Frankly, I’ve been more impressed with what’s happening in rock and metal this year than much of the country that’s been released as of late. Viagra Boys and Psychedelic Porn Crumpets are both among my top five albums for the year (don’t dismiss them based on their name!), and the metal bands Agriculture and Deafheaven rate pretty highly as well.

Anyway, I have no real issue with Zach Bryan being included on the rock chart. Remember that “Copperhead Road” hit the top ten on that chart decades ago and an artist like John Mellencamp, for example, who spoke to rural themes found plenty of success there. I’d say Bryan fits as well there as he does in country, especially with an album that features guest spots from Springsteen and John Mayer.

I can see the case being made for Zach Bryan being included on the rock charts from a sonic argument. I can’t see that for Billie Eilish or Olivia Rodrigo. But the thing is, neither Zach, Rock music, or Billboard benefit from his inclusion there. He’s already dominating the Billboard 200. He’s a contemporary folk artist. That’s what he calls himself. So put him on a contemporary folk chart with Noah Kahan and the half a hundred guys who also do this singer/songwriter stuff with hundreds of millions of streams, and leave the rock charts for actual rock artists. The genre charts are made to highlight performers who otherwise will get shaded out by the big pop stars on the all genre chart. The entire system is incredibly broken.

Much like when the AI songs showed up on the charts, this feels like another highlight in the larger story about how meaningless the charts are and why we should all ignore any references to the charts. You’ve written several versions of this article, we agree it’s a mess, I think we all agree that there’s nothing worth saving. I think all we need is the capstone, the conclusion, in which you tie a few of these articles together, we comment on anything we once cared about that Billboard did, and then we can be done with them.

Yes, I think all of these issues are feeding into the inherent weakness and distrust that the public and really the industry itself has in all of its institutions. It’s this weakness that AI is going to exploit to not just integrate into popular music, but to dominate it. I’m working on a big story about this that will probably go up at the beginning of next year.

SCM is the last place I thought I’d see an Agriculture rec, one of my favorites of the year. And the new Deafheaven album is close to being my favorite of all time.

For the black metal-curious out there check out Panopticon, especially the Kentucky album, or Primeval Well for bands that take heavy inspiration from country and bluegrass.

Have not been paying very close attention to rock, but it’s my impression that it’s been mostly dead as a mainstream genre. I also think that’s a good.

On the other hand, we have a few great things that were less common in the past. There are loads and lloads of women in metal now, and female metal vocalists are a fucking amazing sound that I wish we’d had in the ’80s. There was like, ONE, for like the first decade and a half of metal or something like that. There’s other stuff like that going on in rock here and there. Also, I think more people are playing more instruments and more people are doing weird stuff because musicians are getting skilled more quickly (Good example being metal again- people have really figured out all the different ways of screaming safely without doing painful trial and error).

And it’s great for us in country music because so many of the people who would otherwise have been playing rock are now playing various kinds of good alt country And Americana, And we have all their talents and guitaring.

I just checked out. Casper Allen, which is like a roots rock kind of album with a really really raspy vocalist who’s really interesting. It’s some kind of Americana and it’s hard to place it what decade it would have been if it was traditional. But man that stuff was good. I also think there’s more stuff along the lines of Larkin Poe, rock experiments with various kinds of roots stuff that goes way beyond the blues, bass, rock and roll kind of trope.

Fair enough. I don’t claim to be a rock expert, and stand corrected if the Rodrigo album deserves to be here. I skimmed through it and the tracks I landed on didn’t sound particularly rock to me. But if it does belong here, Rodrigo fans should be pissed it’s coming in at #10 behind so many albums that don’t.

Agreed, by no definition could Billie Eilish’s music be described as ‘rock’ music. That does leave me curious though, Trigger- what rock/soul/blues/etc bands/artists do you listen to outside of the country realm?

I listen to a lot of classic rock, but frankly am so busy cramming country music in my ears, I don’t really have the time to interface with much rock. In my day I was a big punk fan, and I do enjoy some roots-adjacent indie rock these days like Waxahatchee.

I’m not a fan of Billie Eilish but I listen to all genres of music, and she incorporates EMO and alternative rock with punk anesthetics into her music. Now, while those alone wouldn’t make her music solely Rock; she does incorporate it into her music, and therefore her music can be labeled as such. Pop, as should be noted: isn’t actually a genre of music. Country can be Pop. Pop is a style of music that is produced solely for the masses. It incorporates, at times, many genres of music to pull in multiple groups of people at once. She’s labeled a Pop Artist because she attracts multiple groups of people to her music; not me, but many others.

I get where you’re coming from, but to be fair, this Olivia Rodrigo record really does tap into the rock spirit. I think she was nominated for Best Rock Performance with a track from “GUTS” and I saw the point, there’s real energy there, she that pop rock/pop punk edge that a lot of newer artists don’t even try to hit anymore. I took my daughter to see her at Lollapalooza and, honestly, the girl held the stage like someone who grew up listening to guitars turned all the way up. She earned my respect. As for the others, I couldn’t agree more.

I’m guessing these are the top selling (Rock) albums for this year according to Dildoboard. Billboard, like Rollingstone, ceased to be relevant years ago. I didn’t know anyone outside the industry even paid attention to Billboard anymore. Calling any of these albums rock is a stretch, but then they call Bryan country, so…

Like Billboard, I also can’t find any interesting rock and roll from 2025. I’m not quite sure how or why all the oxygen came out of the rock space, but it has. So I can understand why Billboard has trouble filling up a chart. It’s sad, really. Maybe at some point rock will be as dead as big band swing or ragtime.

But I guarantee it’s out there. Finding it is the problem. Billboard and other media outlets, and things like charts and playlists should be curation point to help listeners find the music they’re looking for, and that will speak specifically to them. When you put pop names on a rock chart, you create a barrier to that discovery.

Yeah, fair enough. I suspect there’s not a lot of record company A&R work going in on the rock/metal side of things, which is probably at least in part a market-driven thing.

I did ask ChatGPT a few weeks ago for some newer rock acts (i.e. people younger than I am!) and wasn’t impressed with anything it came up with. When I was coming into indie country and Americana 10 years ago, some stuff (Sturgill, Stapleton) was immediately striking to me as great music, and ChatGPT just couldn’t come up with anything new in rock that I found super-compelling. Maybe it’s a me problem. The Black Keys are still putting out a lot of great blues rock, but after that my playlist gets pretty thin.

Maybe try some bands / artists with new albums in 2025 like Florry (Sounds Like…), Wednesday (Bleeds), Cory Hanson (I Love People), Ty Segall (Possession), Ryan Davis (New Threats From The Soul), Greg Freeman (Burnover), Brian Dunne (Clams Casino), Sharon Van Etten (S/T), S.G. Goodman (Planting by the Signs). Any one of those might have some appeal.

Thanks for sharing these. I’m listening my way through each of these bands’ 2025 albums. SG Goodman was the only one I was familiar with. Oh! And I had a Sharon Van Etten song way back in the iTunes days but haven’t followed her career since. So far I really like Florry.

I’ve found ChatGPT invaluable for exposing me to things I don’t even know exist. It certainly doesn’t bat 1.000, and it may not even bat .500, but it is able to make me aware of things I didn’t even know existed (like tri-fold mattresses and XREAL AR glasses to name a couple of examples). I can’t type a problem into Google and ask for suggestions on how to solve it, but I can do that with ChatGPT.

I’m probably the only one on here besides Trig that reads Billboard Country Update newsletter each week (comes out every Tues) that has the following charts….. Hot 50 Country Songs, Top 25 Country Albums, Country Streaming Songs, and Country Digital Song Sales, Americana Folk Album top 10, and a Bluegrass top 10.

I normally just peruse them to see how our favorites might be faring on there, but yesterday I did notice Treaty Oak with 6 new songs in the Top 50 and the album at #3. Of course this is the time of year they squeeze in all the Christmas music on a few of the charts as well. I usually just laugh and shake my head at the ridiculousness, but my biggest fear is once all the artificial music starts being allowed in instead of having it’s own chart like Trig suggested, its not going to be pretty, and we’ll see total chaos. The blurring of the genres in charts will be the least of everyone’s problems.

A key pivotal moment in Rock’s current demise gave to us by the Grammy’s; Back in 2014 the Grammy’s had a performance queued up where Queens of the Stone Age w/ Dave Grohl, Nine Inch Nails, and Lyndsay Buckingham were to perform together. They booked this performance to close out the evening but ended up cutting out to other programming mid-performance to the chagrin of musicians that inhabit the Rock space. This very much feels like a gatekeeper moment where instead of helping push incumbents in the space, the dovetailing to what was to be started occurring.

Bluegrass Hall of Fame in Owensboro and Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville both have/had displays about how those styles of music spread and radio affiliates helped push the given agenda of big labels. There is a good documentary, Stax: Soulsville USA, where the Stax Salesman talks about their strategy to but into Motown’s slice of the pie by seeking out select markets for growth. Long way to say its the big labels/money pushing agendas and attempting to be in control. MTV was a harbinger of this type of activity in the 80s/90s to drive towards “consumer friendly music”.

IMO, the great fault with Rock is late 00s and early 10s drifted towards the Hard Rock/Metal spectrum which became supersaturated with acts, but none where breaking into the masses or few understood the platforms they should leverage to build/retain their audience. Trent Reznor (NIN) was one of the musicians that was on the bleeding edge side of engaging on Social platforms with his fans (at personal cost to himself with dealing with trolls). Jack White (White Stripes/Raconteurs) pursued his drive of life with music by becoming a version of Willy Wonka and opening Third Man Records. Dan Auerbach (Black Keys) spent time developing his label Easy Eye Sound to have a platform.

The reference to Linkin Park in your article I would attribute more to the band wanting to capitalized on their known commodity of their name. Its very hard to replace a distinctive voice that Chester Bennington provided them. If you can get a product to market that has history there are plenty of gamblers that will roll the dice on the given product the 1st time because the nostalgia factor of hoping to relive a past moment.

Maybe I am slightly disenfranchised but Rock has long been hi-jacked much like our type of Country. Very few are organized to help reclaim this space because of the Dewey Decimal system that exists within Rock (Grunge, Post-Hardcore, Punk, Metal, Hard Rock, Pop Rock, Alternative…..).

I went to Nashville a couple of months ago, and when I visited Third Man, I overheard two customers complaining about how Jack spent more of his time at protest marches rather than coming out with new music. I don’t know. Once you get in the Hall of Fame, you can rest on your laurels, I suppose.

Interesting. From the Google AI feedback sounds like he is anti-Trump and taken a stance on unauthorized music. That could make you a lightning rod to some in society.

Would feel like someone venturing into Third Man would be aware of all the hats he wears for Third Man and everything that label does for music. Thus you are there because you are a music lover instead of getting caught up in beliefs. Those two lost sight of why they were there and making it about them with the classic fan wanting more music out of their artist.

I agree with most everything you’re writing here. Genre has become too loose But i’d like to bring out a different, possibly conflicting point – in the past sometimes genre has been too limiting.

If you go back into the 80s and 90s, you have the Country charts, and then you have The Eagles. Now as a 90s country boy, I grew up listening to your typical country radio to the exclusion of everything else. Fast forward, years, later, and I discovered that 75% of the music of the Eagles would have fit very nicely into country radio at the time. Why wasn’t the Eagles played on Country radio? Probably because their record deal wasn’t in Nashville, so it wasn’t pitched. So sometimes genres can be too limiting.

Funny: I came at this from the other side as a rocker in the 1990s. I flipped the channel on country like it was radioactive. Come to find out that many of the artists that I loved (Eagles, Social Distortion, Susan Tedeschi, Chuck Berry, just to name a few) were STRONGLY influenced by country. Somehow I managed to listen to Tedeschi’s version of “Angel from Montgomery” about 1000 times before I noticed that it was a straight-up country arrangement with pedal steel and everything.

And according to Merle Haggard, it was Chuck Berry who told him that he had to define his sound and message to really stick out. So Merle composed “Working Man’s Blues” and became a huge star.

Fun fact; Merle heard Rick Nelson’s “You Just Can’t Quit” (from Nelson’s first “country” album in ’66). Burton’s picking impressed Merle so much that he hired the young Burton. If I remember it correctly, Burton made his Haggard-debut playing those distinct dobro licks on Hag’s Jimmie tribute in ’68. (The most consistent album in Hag’s pile of them, in my opinion.)

Praguefrank’s website says the first Haggard session with James Burton was June 28.1966. Three songs were recorded: “I Can’t Stand Me”, “The Longer You Wait”, and “The Bottle Let Me Down”.

1. I volunteer for local college radio and we are required to play 4 “features” an hour, meaning new music. We get a lot of drone and experimental but mostly we get mellow hazy indie rock/pop with reverb. And it all sounds the same, no distinctive voices. Usually female vocals.

I believe this is because of algorithms. You like a certain sound and it sends you only that sound. And young people/new acts think that is what X genre sounds like. And the circle goes on. And thus genres get very narrowly defined *side eyes punk* usually as the exclusion of women.

It is why many people think Folklore was a folk album when really it is just a pop album like Carly Simon’s debut or even something like Sarah Mclachlan. Folklore sounds like all the “indie folk” the algorithms were sending people. Some hazy mellow music with vocals in the back of the mix.

But the rock charts has a LONG history of WTF? In the early 80s when the rock charts started you would see such variety on it, Journey, Supertramp, John Mellencamp, The Cars, Missing Persons, Cyndi Lauper, U2, Billy Idol, Bruce, Talking Heads, Pretenders, Pat Benetar… But as the 80s went on it shifted to a more cock rock/classic rock focus and booted most of the female acts that had been charting except Heart.
Which fine- Cyndi Lauper is a pop queen… Except they didn’t boot any of he male acts! And how is Tonight She Comes by The Cars more rock than I Drove All Night by Cyndi Lauper?!

To give space to all the wild new wave and rock acts who were not as “hard” the alternative charts came in 88. It was a place for folks like Siouxsie Sioux, The Cure, Blind Melon, Suzanne Vega, 10,000 Maniacs, Blind Melon stuff not as easily pigeonholed. Also lots of female voices and queer acts.

Still you had acts like Peter Gabriel and U2 and Nirvana and REM landing on both the rock and alternative charts meanwhile Alanis was relegated to Alternative or straight pop same with Tori Amos and other female acts Breeders, L7, Hole. And how is REM more rock than 10,000 Maniacs?

By the mid 90s the same thing happened to the Alt charts that happened to the rock charts they booted the women to pop or AC or to the music desert! Leaving Alt with RHCP, Blink-182, Green Day, Foo Fighters…

And I will fight to the death anyone who tells me Alanis’ Uninvited is not a power ballad and better than that Diane Warren sop Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing and no less rock than Led Zeppelins Cashmere.

All this is to vent that if you think the country charts are wonky… Rock and alternative have a grand history of WTF? And historically have been WAY worse for women. Country charts always had some decent female rep especially in the later 80s and 90s even if they too eventually booted the women keeping the Token Miranda Lambert. And so they had to create Americana a label as wonky as Alternative. And look at the men on the Americana charts that also make the country charts while the women don’t hit both. Just you wait Americana charts will probably boot the women too!

Going farther back to the ’50s, “rock” was often used as a synonym for Top 40 – erroneously, because the original idea of Top 40 was to play the most popular songs regardless of genre, meaning it would include Eddy Arnold or Doris Day if they happened to have a top selling record. There started to be a little more distinction once Progressive Rock started to become a thing in the late ’60s, but the synonym was still used by some stations into the ’70s and ’80s even as “CHR” emerged as a new term for Top 40 and their playlists included “You Light Up My Life,” “Endless Love” and “Islands in the Stream.” (Incidentally, “You Light Up My Life” was also considered country enough to reach the Top 5 there!)

I do think there are times when an album can fit on two charts. But it should be rare as opposed to a regular occurrence. Treaty Oak Revival is a rock band. Billie Eilish is pop.

Billie Eilish is not hard rock, but she gets airplay on Alternative formats, which may be why Billboard considers her “rock.” May be time to splinter the Rock albums chart into Alternative and Hard Rock, just as they did with album-track airplay charts in the late ’80s.

There needs to be a disclaimer put on year-end “popularity” rankings like this. Males and mature adults of both sexes (and others) are obviously listening to music, too, but they’re not obsessively listening to the current TikTok-driven hip-hop, emo pop, or trap-beat country hit over and over and over and over every single day.

For what its worth Treaty Oak’s spotify bio (that they wrote) says theyre a country rock band formed on a foundation of texas red dirt country combined with its influences of punk and southern rock.

I think maybe we’re just reaching an era where the billboard charts are largely irrelevant (hard for people of a certain age to comprehend, I’m aware as I’m part of that certain age) and the Grammy’s are largely irrelevant, too.

These things used to matter in a big way and I believe they no longer do. I’m assuming if you’re an artist and in the running for a Grammy you probably care but I don’t think these things mean as much as they used to, like, 30+ years ago. But even when top artists aren’t submitting their work to be considered for a Grammy, can we say with a straight face that they’re as important as they once were?

Maybe I’m myopic in my take, but I don’t know anyone who talks about the Grammys in the way that they discuss the Oscars….and by that, I mean that I don’t know anyone who discusses the Grammys at all. Quite frankly, the only time I see it mentioned in any meaningful way is when visit SCM. Billboard is just such an irrelevant, outdated concept, too.

Not sure if anyone agrees with me, not sure if anyone cares. But I will say as a fan of this site that I’m sure most of us can agree that a lot of the best music we’ve heard lately or some of our all time favorite music won’t sniff a Grammy or a Billboard ranking and that’s all that really matters.

The Billboard charts and the Grammys are definitely becoming irrelevant because they’re unable to adapt and are not serving their constituencies. I do give credit to the Grammys for trying to adapt by adding a “Best Traditional Country Album” category, etc. But the problem is that when these 3rd party institutions lose their relevancy, what becomes more relevant is Spotify streams, TikTok impressions, etc., all of which is ripe with pay to play manipulations that mislead the public, and put independent and up-and-coming artists at a disadvantage.

I see where you’re coming from but I disagree to a certain extent. If I understand you correctly, you’re saying Billboard/Grammy’s are outdated, but the new way to track what gets played and what gets popular is Spotify Streams and TikTok impressions. And I get why those are problematic.

You’re obviously more invested in this than I am and know more about it than I do, but I think while these new metrics are flawed and no system would ever be perfect, this is a way better way to gauge music and have someone get exposure that, 25+ years ago, never would. Oliver Anthony is a perfect example…I know you’ve had plenty to say about him, but just using him as an example…way smaller chance that he gets any kind of exposure in 1995 than he does in the 2020s.

Obviously, streaming and social media have played a huge role in the independent music revolution. But their ability to break artists has been dramatically diminishing over the past year or two, in part because labels now know how to work the system and use it to launch their artists with big money. This once again circles back to the issue of how 2025 saw very few “new” artists break into the business.

Billboard should just stick to one chart named “Pop” (as in it’s original meaning; pop-ular songs/music) and simply list the most played songs and most selling albums, with no emphasizing of the fleeting genres of today.

Well jelly roll just got invited to join the opry so its all crazy. Rock has seemed dead for a while though far as new music goes other than when a green day record comes out.

Dolly records a rock album. With heavy metal and rock acts. It’s a rock effort and that is all that it is. And yet Billboard ranked it a #1 country album.
That move completely ended any glimmer of relevancy that Billboard might have had.

Wilco, the Mats, the Stones, Big star, REM, the beths, Jeff rosenstock, Remo drive, hold steady, strokes, spoon, cake, modest mouse, japandroids Chuck Berry, Nathaniel rateliff, and Elvis is rock. You’re glad that is “dead”??

“This doesn’t mean that in certain rare circumstances, you might have a song or album from a megastar that does deserve to be on two charts at the same time.”

But Back In The Day (TM, and I promise not to use that expression again anytime soon), it wasn’t that rare at all. You had your Johnny Cash, Linda Ronstadt, NGDirt Band, Eagles did it frequently if they cut a song that could resonate with two different audiences.

Maybe the fans weren’t as silo-ed off as they seem today. Or those old school acts truly had roots in more than one genre. Welcome other theories . . .

The genre bending is tough. One thing we have to realize is that there is no “pure” genre. Rock is a bigger challenge. A tougher project for Trigger to create would be Saving Rock Music. What classifies? I’d argue that The Everly Brothers and Buddy Holly were rock and The Beatles were pop. CCR, The Foo are to me what rock should be compared to. Walk into a dive bar anywhere and put them on touch tunes and you likely won’t get your ass kicked. Everyone can agree it’s good music.

Another point is, although I love this site and what it does; I am not a sole country listener. I doubt very much anyone here is. I say listen to it all, respect those that do something purely and with the greatest of intentions; and enjoy the sh&t out of the Treaty Oak Revival song that actually is good on the occasion it shows itself

“Where’s the guy in the steel toes covered in dirt?
Just a rock ‘n’ roll t-shirt, headed to work
With a pack of Red Man in his pocket
He’s kind of red, man but he’s rockin’”. -Jason Aldean, “We Back”

Picking up on a comment Trigger made above:
Is it possible that a lot of not-so-young country fans were punk fans in their youth? I now know a number of people with this development of musical taste. It was the same with me. If others feel the same way: What was your personal “conversion experience” with country music?

“Rock music” in general is not dead, though, older music is what keeps it alive. Most of the great bands that are now considered classic rock have healthy streaming numbers and the ones who can still tour sell tickets. The problem is that newer bands and newer music is having trouble gaining traction.

There’s plenty of new rock music going on these days but it’s not the kind of thing that gets on Billboard charts. Check out White Denim, for example.
And that’s fine, I’ve spent my whole life ignoring whatever Billboard says and I listen to plenty of music.

There’s an unreal amount of GREAT rock music these days. Most of it is not going to appear on Billboard’s year end lists but it is popping up on plenty of other year end lists. In terms of quality, songwriting, performance it’s adjacent to many of the great country artists that you find here on SCM. Bands / Artists like Ty Segall, Cory Hanson, MJ Lenderman, Wednesday, Florry, Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band, SG Goodman, Greg Freeman, Sharon Van Etten, Rosali, David Nance, Country Westerns…. these just scratch the surface of the sheer number of great “rock” artists out there. Some of them like Greg Freeman, Rosali, Ryan Davis and obviously MJ Lenderman would fit quite well reviewed in SCM, I think. 2025 was an EXCELLENT year for rock and country I think.

I’m not defending her but Olivia Rodrigo is a whole lot closer to rock than M***** W***** is to country. Or at the very least a whole lot closer to good than M****** W***** is.

Next step: biographies and cookbooks start to make an appearance in bestseller lists for fiction. Maybe “The Hobbit” will be the bestselling non-fiction and self-help title of 2026.

If it hasn’t been obvious forever, there’s been a HUGE push to funnel music listeners into fewer and fewer buckets, and Nashville’s job is to herd country radio listeners into the pop bucket. This is the same thing big labels, cumulus and iheartmedia are doing with rock and RnB and any other genre format. Genre crossover collab tracks, using the same writers, producers and studios regardless of genre. This is an intentional strategy to choke off diversity, because diversity is expensive and hard to control. Unless you know how to roll back the telecoms act, enforce antitrust law on radio, labels and streams, the mainstream will just get narrower and narrower. Don’t be surprised when Warner makes Zach Bryan use synth pads and reverb, ditch the highway boys, and do a burna boy collab. Or any other version of this.

Source: savingcountrymusic.com