Country music in the modern era has a somewhat strained, awkward relationship with The Recording Academy and, by extension, the biggest music award show on the planet, The Grammys. Between its highest-selling artists bowing out of consideration for the awards, simply not showing up, or being left out of the televised broadcast, there’s a bit of passive-aggressive animosity between Nashville and its peers across the globe. Some of this strife obviously stems from Beyoncé’s controversial win for Best Country Album last year, but that moment really only acted as a culmination of country music’s frustrations with the notion that the style was being treated as a tourist attraction by pop stars with more reach and resources.
Still, there is some pretty profound (if not slightly muted) recognition of some of the genre’s most talented stars over on the West Coast. Zach Bryan, despite a voluntary omission in last year’s show, took home an award in 2024 for his collaboration with Kacey Musgraves on “I Remember Everything,” and even more alternative artists like Billy Strings and Sierra Ferrell were recognized in country music for specific delegations off-camera. Its lack of visibility, while hard to argue against on logistical grounds, paints a pretty backward picture of a commercially minded institution attempting to interpret an art form that’s almost entirely self-democratized.
As we sit and rot away the after-party hangover, we’ll take a look at some of the biggest moments for country music at the Grammys, and maybe a few that should’ve been shifted into the spotlight.
- Jelly Roll and Shaboozey are now Nashville’s ambassadors to Hollywood. Should they be?
Thanks to his win for Best Contemporary Country album, Jelly Roll became country music’s spokesperson on the world’s stage last night, even if he barrelled through his manicured on-stage moments and fumbled through a few statements that felt like they were absent from his publicist meeting leading up to the show. Coupled with an assist to Shaboozey in their Best Country Duo/Group Performance for “Amen,” and Shaboozey’s prior litany of nominations, it’s safe to say that the two are being positioned to act in a sort of Hollywood embassy-type role for Nashville.
There is plenty of well-meaning, pointed criticism to make of both of those artists and their place within the genre, but it may be worth noting that the two provide a pretty easy on-ramp for the casual observer. As scripted as he seems, Jelly Roll’s apolitical, sermon-style stage presence, and Shaboozey’s affinity for a diverse sonic palette could be seen as a net positive when viewed as an entry point. The two former rappers both modernize archaic styles thanks to those former sensibilities, and, in turn, make for a case study of exactly where the line in the sand lies as far as fandom. Will a fan of “Good News” find themselves gravitating toward a more prototypical, rank-and-file country that Shaboozey tends to pluck feathers from? That I can’t say, but I’d be willing to argue that their inclusion in the larger music market is far more inviting than most country fans would give them credit for.
This is less of a demand of Nashville to welcome them in with open arms, and more of a gut reaction to observe the pair benevolently. They are not without their flaws, but it may be justifiable to let the experiment run its course if the result could be more markets and greater interest in one of the world’s most longstanding and trending forms of performance art. If it could eventually lead to greater accessibility and accolades for more down-the-middle country artists simply because of proximity, was it really such a bad thing after all?
2. I don’t care about category fraud; find a way to give Zach Top airtime.
It’s clear to anyone in the orbit of Nashville that Zach Top, at least for the time being, is one of the hottest things in country music right now. Despite some slight revisionism to the initial hype in recent months and a small wane in the craze that catapulted him to stardom, it’s hard to imagine he isn’t being primed to represent the genre in some capacity; his win in the Best Traditional Country Album category last night was a clear signal of that.
So, why is he so absent from the genre’s core characters in the eyes of the Recording Academy? The obvious answer is that the pop-favoring collective naturally gravitates toward Shaboozey and Jelly Roll, the genre’s more pop lenient figureheads, or that Top’s personality just isn’t primed for a Grammy stage in the same way that a Jelly Roll megachurch monologue is. Still, he represents a version of the genre that at first felt lost in time in Nashville. As a mainstream revivalist of the traditional space, there’s really no good excuse to omit his presence from national television. He presents as a good hang, makes for an electrifying live performance, and above all, is motioning back in an era that paid little regard to outside noise or coastal elite critiques. The more jaded part of me says that the same reasons that could justify his inclusion among country music fans also serve as the basis for his exclusion from the rest of the music world. Regardless, it’s time for the Recording Academy to acknowledge where “cool” in country music lies, in the hands of bluegrass fanatics who brandish beers onstage and smoke cigarettes in between Merle Haggard covers. Culturally, he’s becoming Morgan Wallen without the controversy, so maybe “true” country music was always going to be shunned on merit if this is the treatment Top gets.
3. A much-deserved, long-overdue win for Tyler Childers.
Tyler Childers’s Best Country Song win for “Bitin’ List” is almost akin to Leonardo DiCaprio’s late-career Best Actor win for “The Revenant.” I don’t know if “Bitin’ List,” or anything off of “Snipe Hunter,” is anyone’s favorite Childers moment. It’s certainly nowhere near his most culturally important effort, but there is something to be said for the 34-year-old’s most self-indulgent, brazenly risky project to date finally being the one that nudges him into the spotlight.
Firstly, it’s just an odd song. Anthemic in a rabid way (cue the dogs barking), not entirely lyrically varied aside from its playfully abrasive chorus, but most importantly, it’s a frantic excerpt amidst a collection of big swings from Childers on “Snipe Hunter.” Commemorating experimental, exploratory efforts in any genre should be considered in some victorious fashion, especially within an art form that’s constantly clinging to reheated recipes as a form of sustenance.
4. Is Billy Strings quietly becoming an industry darling?
Though untelevised, it’s important to note that one of country music’s adjacent stars seems to be garnering his flowers from the establishment at a pretty rapid pace, yet no one seems to care. It’s partially due to the fact that Strings’s fanbase, emulating the jam band mania, is fairly insulated and self-sustaining. Still, it’s growing rapidly, consistently selling out larger and larger venues, while his annual performance dates regularly total in the triple digits. It may not be a direct win for country music, but it’s worth noting and applauding that Highway Prayers won Best Bluegrass Album. As someone who grazes against Nashville’s best (see the collaborative EP he put out with Zach Top last year and his feature on Post Malone’s F-1 Trillion), now with two Grammy wins, it’s a significant milestone that complements his rapidly growing audience and points toward a musical climate that’s able to engage with traditional country music in boundary-pushing ways.
5. The Best Contemporary Country Album category was delightfully diverse.
In the only televised moment that country music got at the 2026 Grammys, we spotlighted a traditional country artist’s experimental album, a hip-hop infused radio record, pop-leaning southern sensibilities, and two of Nashville’s establishment artists delivering grand concept projects and old ideas reimagined on Eric Church’s “Evangeline vs. The Machine” and Miranda Lambert’s “Postcards From Texas,” respectively. Even if the eventual highlighted name of that bunch left a little to be desired, that grouping alone should illustrate how far country music has come stylistically and in terms of recognition.
Even if we’re now teetering into the morning after its zeitgeist dominance, the presence of the genre on a national stage and the diversity it harbored this year speaks volumes about what has been constantly denigrated as a one-trick pony art form. Without critiquing the records themselves, they still all touch on the core ideas that have been part of country music since its inception, while packaging them in unique ways. Not for nothing, mainstream music has never been more democratized, and influence has never been more free-form than it is today. Despite that flattening, the end product for country fans is a pick of a million different flavors. It’s an achievement on its own that the Recording Academy can acknowledge that.
