Between the post-holiday malaise and some impromptu January travel, this article was a long time in the making. But now, like the rest of the South, I find myself facing down an ice storm with nowhere to go for a whole weekend, and so there’s finally time for the best part of my month – sitting down with y’all to chat about music and numbers. On top of that, since it’s January, we get to look back at 2025! Last year in this article, we noted that only 3 artists had ever reached the #1 spot in the rankings before 2026, when 3 new #1s arrived: Riley Green, Cody Johnson, and, just this month, Ella Langley. It’s only fitting that the artist who had the best 2025 (more on that later) would claim her first #1 ranking at the start of the new year. But before we jump into our 2025 recap, here are January’s numbers:
Biggest Risers and Fallers of 2025
It’s a little hard to believe, but both Ella Langley and Treaty Oak Revival followed up their top 5 rises in 2024 with yet another top 5 rise in 2025. Both have been red hot all year, as (gratuitous back-patting incoming) we correctly predicted in our article last year, with Ella jumping from 18th at the start of 2025 to #1 at the start of 2026, and Treaty moving from #11 up to #4. It becomes exponentially more difficult to move up once you hit the top 10 of the rankings, making the gains even more impressive. Further down, Ole 60’s Smokestack Town (a finalist for Country Central’s 2025 staff award for best cover art) paid dividends for them this year, vaulting them 16 points. Two young artists, Adcock and Westbrook, rounded out the list of the biggest risers for 2025. Notably, the makeup of this year’s top 5 looks remarkably similar to last year’s. Two bands (2024: Treaty Oak and Red Clay Strays, 2025: Treaty Oak and Ole 60), one trendy established name (2024: Riley Green, 2025: Ella Langley), and two rising artists trying to make a name for themselves (2024: Ella Langley and Zach Top, 2025: Gavin Adcock and Hudson Westbrook).
2025 was a tough year for several established brands. 2024’s list of biggest fallers was fairly unsurprising, littered with country adjacent flashes in the pan like Post Malone and Noah Kahan (both of whom fell out of the rankings altogether this year). Still, the biggest fallers this year look like a who’s who of some recently hot acts. Moroney and Flores were huge hits in 2023, while Top was indisputably the king of the CC50 in 2024. Of course, “Biggest Fallers” here has to be taken with a grain of salt. All of these artists still have huge followings, and Top and Moroney are both still in the top 10 of the CC50. But there does seem to be some real voter fatigue, especially among artists with little to no output this year (like Flores and Wilson). The worst news may be for Tyler Childers, who lost 13 points of voter Interest despite releasing his first album since 2023. The only thing worse than losing fans by not releasing music is losing fans *because* you are releasing music.
Quick Hits
- The CC50 has never seen a more consistent, stable rise than Ella Langley, full stop. Most of these CC50 articles focus on big changes like jumps, album releases, headlines, and voting swings. Ella has, by and large, missed all of these, yet has still steadily chugged her way up the CC50 rankings. In fact, she has appeared in 5 of the last 12 months’ “Biggest Risers” category, while never once appearing in the “Biggest Fallers” category. All of this bodes very well for the Alabama native whose first album came out just 16 months ago. Faster ascents tend to be coupled with faster descents (ask Post Malone), and higher-volatility artists tend to struggle to hold their rankings in the long term. What’s more, she’s found success from a wide range of songs from collabs like “you look like you love me” and “That’s Why We Fight” (we’ll graciously pass over Hell At Night) to singles like “Choosin’ Texas” and “weren’t for the wind” (evidently Langley has a distaste for capital letters, much like Kelsea Ballerini or HARDY’s country alter ego).
- Speaking of stable artists, is there anyone more rock-steady than King George? In this exact spot in last year’s January article, we commented on how consistent Strait’s numbers were throughout all of 2024. Well, he did it again in 2025. Outside of a little hiccup in February, he has logged an Interest % between 55% and 62% every single month, a remarkable feat. Just take a look at how flat the graph below is! It’s probably a case of voters voting for his past music (rather than anticipation of new music from him). However, he still has a few months to release more music before being removed from the rankings (artists who have been inactive for two or more years are removed from the chart by the CC50 policy). Notable to me, though, is that unlike some legends who release music not up to their standards as their careers wind down, Strait has kept the quality high, and the CC50 voters continue to acknowledge that.
- Overall listener interest rose slightly in January, with an Interest percentage of 38.2% (indicating that the average artist on the CC50 has 3.8 in ten audience members interested in their releases). The overall vote count was 416,338, the highest since August last year.
Wildcard Watch
One of the fruits of having nearly 2.5 years of CC50 data and Wildcard voting is that we rarely miss any artists flying under the radar. Usually, within a month or two of a breakout or hit single, a new artist will find themselves on the CC50, where they will get voted on next to established stars like Morgan Wallen and Megan Moroney. Of course, such immediate recognition comes at a cost: it is very, very hard for a Wildcard artist to get much traction in the CC50 rankings. When we first launched the CC50, artists that we straight-up missed when compiling the original voting list for y’all flew up the rankings from the Wildcard voting (Parker McCollum springs to mind). Now, however, there have been very few surprises. In fact, only two wildcards all year were able to immediately jump into the top 40 (Vincent Mason in July and Tim McGraw in September). Even more telling, only 19 out of the 60 wildcards in 2025 (just under a third) even survived relegation in their debut month. For context, here’s the top 5 performances by wildcards in 2025:
Seeing Braxton Keith make 2 appearances in the top 5 naturally raises the question of which artist was promoted/demoted the most frequently in 2025 (or, in baseball terms, who was the most AAAA player). The answer, surprisingly for astute students of the CC50, was not Midland. Instead, Sturgill Simpson took home the crown with an almost unbelievable FIVE cycles (bear in mind, the absolute minimum time that would take is 10 months if he was promoted one month, demoted the next, promoted again the next, etc.), followed by, you guessed it, Midland, Dylan Marlowe, and 49 Winchester, all historical Wildcard stalwarts.
Last year’s January ‘25 CC50 article had perhaps the saddest outro of any of my CC50 articles, a pathetic two-sentence reflection on an Ohio State natty and another Taylor Swift Super Bowl. Well, lucky for me, both those things are off the table as we got to experience the absolute work of art that was 2025 Indiana football, and the Chiefs didn’t even make the playoffs (with due apologies to Andy Reid). Even better than those things is the prospect of a whole new year full of new music and storylines, and, last but not least, the exquisite cardinal that is braving the ice outside my window to serenade me as I write this. See y’all back here in February!
