A little-remembered fact: Turner's first solo album was a curveball called Tina Turns the Country On! Up until then, her work with Ike Turner had been rooted in gritty R&B, funk, and blues. But on her 1974 debut, she gave raw, powerful performances of songs by Hank Snow ("I'm Movin' On"), Dolly Parton ("There'll Always Be Music"), and Bob Dylan ("Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You"). And, with due respect to Sammi Smith, she delivered perhaps the definitive reading of Kris Kristofferson's "Help Me Make It Through the Night," amping up the song’s simmering sexual tension. ("'Cause tonight I need a man," she pleaded, changing "friend" to "man.") Also worth finding is Turner’s righteous take on Loretta Lynn's "You Ain’t Woman Enough (to Take My Man)." — J.R.

Listen: "Help Me Make It Through the Night"

Her neighborhood wasn't exactly a hotbed of country music, but for young Astoria, Queens, native Cyndi Lauper, the country songs her Aunt Gracie was listening to left an indelible impression. Lauper flirted with rockabilly as a member of the band Blue Angel before superstardom came wrapped in the colorful New Wave of her 1983 LP, She's So Unusual. She mined classic country and rockabilly for 2016's Detour, which showcased the quirky singer's lovingly rendered interpretations of tunes popularized by Patsy Cline, Ray Price and more. Adding guest appearances from Emmylou Harris and Willie Nelson was a nice touch. — S.B.

Listen: "Heartaches By the Number"

Some artists’ catalogs are so universally beloved that they transcend genre. You can be a true-blue country fan and still know every word to Richie’s “Hello” or “All Night Long (All Night).” So it made sense when the Eighties pop titan ventured down a dusty road on 2012's Tuskegee, named after his Alabama birthplace. He added some torch and twang to his greatest hits, with a little help from his friends Blake Shelton, Shania Twain, Willie Nelson, Jason Aldean, Kenny Chesney, Darius Rucker, Jimmy Buffett and others who helped make it the biggest-selling country album of that year. – J.R.

Listen: "Stuck on You" (with Darius Rucker)

The statistics are pretty impressive: Darius Rucker fronted one of the biggest-selling rock bands in the world in the mid-Nineties, yet he’s had more Number One albums and way more Number One songs as a country artist. When he announced Hootie & the Blowfish’s hiatus in 2008 so he could pursue a solo career, pretty much everybody figured this thing would be a flash in the pan. But with an honest appreciation for the genre, heartfelt songs and unique, raspy-but-warm vocals, he’s become a truly beloved figure on the scene. (And nobody calls him Hootie anymore.) — C.P.

Listen: "All I Want" (featuring Brad Paisley)

Jerry Lee Lewis was one of the original wild-man firebrands of rock & roll, but his career cratered in 1958 after he married his 13-year-old cousin. A decade spent howling in the commercial wilderness reduced Lewis to his lowest ebb, but it also turned him into a semi-tragic character who could convincingly sing twangy barroom weepers. So Lewis embraced his honkytonk side, and 1968’s "Another Place, Another Time" returned him to country’s Top 10 for the first time since 1957. More country hits followed over the next decade, nearly two-dozen Top 10s in all, and the best of them was “What’s Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made a Loser Out of Me)” – a mournful song that the younger, swaggering Lewis probably could not have pulled off. — D.M.

Listen: "What’s Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made a Loser Out of Me)"

For as much as Twitty is one of country's greatest and most successful artists of all time, it's often overlooked that he started out in pop and rock & roll. After a short stint with Sun Records when he wrote the Roy Orbison hit "Rock House," Twitty moved to MGM and released the 1958 Number One "It's Only Make Believe," which featured backing vocals from the Jordanaires. He followed that with rockabilly-flavored singles like "Danny Boy" and "Lonely Blue Boy" but moved to country in the early Sixties when his rock singles stopped charting. From there, of course, he went on to accumulate the most country Number Ones in history until George Strait eventually eclipsed him. More importantly, he brought a sensuality and sexuality to country music that can still be heard in the work of everyone from Blake Shelton to Sam Hunt. — J.F.

Listen: "After the Fire Is Gone" with Loretta Lynn

As the scion of rap rock who exploded to stardom with a song called “Bawitdaba” and walked around in shiny track suits, who in 1999 could have imagined that Kid Rock would eventually have a viable country music career? If you looked close there were early signs — songs like “Only God Knows Why” especially — but it was hard to see past lyrics referencing strippers, G’s with 40s, crackheads and caps of meth at the time. By 2002, though, Kid was dueting with Sheryl Crow (or Allison Moorer) on country radio, had a Number Four hit by 2008 (“All Summer Long”) and went on to host the CMT Music Awards twice (2010 and 2011). — C.P.

Listen: "Picture" (with fellow rocker-gone-country, Sheryl Crow)

Once the pop-music princess of American shopping malls, Tiffany recast herself as an independent country artist with 2011's Rose Tattoo, trading the synths of her earlier records for a mix of pedal steel and acoustic guitar. The album's thunder was partially stolen by the low-budget movie Mega Python Vs. Gatoroid, which premiered that same year and, in a bizarre moment of Eighties nostalgia, featured a food fight between Tiffany and former chart rival Debbie Gibson. Half a decade later, though, Rose Tattoo holds up considerably better than Mega Python, with songs like "He Won't Miss Me" showing off the writing chops that her catalog of Reagan-era hits — half of which were covers of Sixties songs — overlooked. — A.L.

Listen:  "He Won't Miss Me"

Still riding high on the success of back-to-back pop albums, Michelle Branch switched gears in 2005, teaming up with her longtime friend and former backup vocalist, Jessica Harp, to form short-lived country duo the Wreckers. The pair's only record, Stand Still, Look Pretty, was released one year later, sending its first single — "Leave the Pieces," one of only two tracks not written by the girls themselves — to the top of the country charts. "Tennessee" tugs the heartstrings with more conviction, though, while also reversing the Wreckers power dynamic, recasting Harp as the lead singer and Branch as the sideman. — A.L.

Listen: "Tennessee"

Released during the peak of the Civil Rights Movement, Ray Charles' Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music blurred the racial boundaries that divided mid-century America. The year was 1962, and country music was still a white man's game. Modern Sounds changed that, with Charles taking a soulful stab at country classics by the Everly Brothers, Hank Williams and Don Gibson. The best track? A gorgeous version of Eddy Arnold's "You Don't Know Me," dressed up with orchestral strings and thickly-stacked vocal harmonies. — A.L.

Listen: "You Don't Know Me"

It was the live performance heard around the world – and landed with a thud. As part of the Kennedy Center Honors in 2006, Simpson saluted Dolly Parton but kept flubbing the words to "9 to 5." That didn’t prevent the pop star from going full country two years later with Do You Know, a slick Nashville outing that debuted at Number One on the country charts. (And to prove there were no hard feelings, Parton sang harmony on the title track.) – J.R.

Listen: "Do You Know," featuring Dolly Parton

Soulful Irishman Morrison has built his career around exploring the different aspects of American music in its myriad forms — jazz, soul, garage rock and everything in between. But in 2006, he went full country (or at least a bygone representation of it) with Pay the Devil, issued by venerable roots label Lost Highway. In addition to covers of the chestnut "There Stands the Glass" (recorded by Webb Pierce) and Rodney Crowell's "'Til I Can Gain Control Again" (recorded by Emmylou Harris), Pay the Devil features a handful of Morrison's original compositions styled to fit with the classic material. — J.F.

Listen: "Your Cheatin' Heart"

When the promo cycle for Aerosmith's Music From Another Dimension began to die down in 2013, Steven Tyler took a semi-permanent vacation to Nashville, making surprise appearances at Keith Urban gigs and country music awards shows along the way. Two years later, he launched his country solo career with "Love Is Your Name," a song that pitched its tent halfway between Aerosmith's Get a Grip-era arena-rock and Mumford & Sons' Americana. A full-length album, We're All Somebody from Somewhere, followed in July 2016, but Tyler's kickoff single still packs the biggest punch. — A.L.

Listen: "Love Is Your Name"

In 1981, English singer-songwriter Elvis Costello took a pretty surprising detour from the caffeinated new wave he'd perfected with albums like This Year's Model and My Aim Is True. He headed to Nashville and recorded Almost Blue, a collection of classic country tunes that saw him working with country heavyweight producer Billy Sherrill instead of Nick Lowe (who had produced all of Costello's albums to that point). Comprised of songs like Merle Haggard's "Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down" and Hank Williams' "Why Don’t You Love Me Like You Used To," Almost Blue still twitches with Costello's trademark nervy energy but his sincere love of the form is evident as is his skill for singing it. — J.F.

Listen: "Almost Blue"

Bon Jovi rode their steel horse to Nashville for 2007's Lost Highway album, one of the rock icons' most successful projects to date. Produced by Nashville treasure (and former rocker himself) Dann Huff (Faith Hill, Keith Urban), the LP was nowhere near a 180-degree turn for the New Jersey group. It simply saw them putting a little more pedal steel to their arena-rousing sound. Duets with LeAnn Rimes, Big & Rich and Jennifer Nettles helped boost the album's country cred, with the infectious, anthemic Nettles collab, "Who Says You Can't Go Home," as its chart-topping standout. — B.D.

Listen: "Who Says You Can't Go Home"

Bob Dylan's early records always hinted at an appreciation for country music, but never as potently as John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline, two albums that doubled down on Tennessee twang and crisp, story-based songwriting. Dylan even adopted a new singing style for the occasion, filling Nashville Skyline with a gentle croon more suitable for a back-porch picking session than a rock & roll show. "Lay Lady Lay" remains timeless, but it's "Girl From the North Country" — his loose duet with Johnny Cash — that stands as Dylan's most countryfied moment to date. — A.L.

Listen: "Girl From the North Country"