35 Most Anticipated Country Albums of 2016

Album: Down to My Last Bad Habit
Release Date: February 12th
There may not be enough space to enumerate all the reasons to look forward to Gill's new album, due out February 12th. But here are six: He has never made a bad album. His last two releases — 2011's stellar Guitar Slinger and 2013's Bakersfield, a team effort with venerable steel guitarist Paul Franklin in tribute to Buck Owens and Merle Haggard — were some of the best of his career. The first single "Take Me Down," featuring harmony vocals from Little Big Town, is a sexy slice of country rock that features one of the Oklahoma native's patented stinging guitar solos, sharp lyrics and a welcome sultry swagger. Among the co-writers on the album's 12 tracks are Ashley Monroe, Al Anderson and Leslie Satcher. Rising star Cam is featured on "I'll Be Waiting for You." And the final song, written by Gill solo, is a trad-country tribute to the Possum titled "Sad One Comin' On (A Song for George Jones)." For that reason alone, we're already tearing up. S.R.

Album: Pawn Shop
Release Date: January 15th
Brothers Osborne's debut LP will finally see the light of day on January 15th, nearly two years after the single "Rum" first hit country radio. Rooted in groove, grit and the epic sweep of John Osborne's guitar, the album takes as much influence from classic rock as modern country. Most of the songs — like the nostalgic "21 Summer" and the cinematic "Heart Shaped Locket" — have already been road-tested too, thanks to more than a year's worth of top-shelf tour dates with Eric Church and Darius Rucker. Written by a pair of brothers who grew up playing songs by Bob Seger, George Jones and Tom Petty during family picking parties in their native Maryland, Pawn Shop proves there's plenty of new spark to be found in used goods. A.L.

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA
The gossip fiend inside us all will no doubt scour every line of Blake Shelton's as-yet-untitled 2016 album for some glimpse into what led to the superstar's divorce from Miranda Lambert. "I’m doing what I’m supposed to do, and that's put all I've gone through and put it into music, and I never felt more connected to a record before," Shelton told Country Countdown USA's Lon Helton in a December interview. "When people hear this record, they may not know what happened to me, but they're gonna know how I felt about it." A first single from the project is expected in January. If only Lambert would release her side of the story in 2016, we'd have a complete saga worthy of binge listening. J.F.

Album: Southern Family
Release Date: March 18th
Southern Family is two things: a compilation uniting some of Nashville's sharpest songwriters and a concept album that asks them to sing of the siblings they grew up with and the houses that built them. Jamey Johnson does one called "Momma's Table," Chris and Morgane Stapleton duet on "You Are My Sunshine," Zac Brown tells us about "Grandma's Garden" and Brandy Clark contributes "I Cried." "I wanted to have really talented artists custom write and do songs that mean a lot to them," producer Dave Cobb told Rolling Stone Country. "I wanted them to do the most honest song they could possibly do." N.M.

Album: New City Blues
Release Date: January 29th 
With New City Blues, Aubrie Sellers releases an exquisitely produced debut that thrillingly walks a razor's edge between blues, rock and country. Sellers is the product of one of country music's best singers of the past two decades (Lee Ann Womack) and one of Music City's most underappreciated songwriters (Jason Sellers), and her 21st-century take on the genre is a bold and brash affair awash in electric guitars. (It's also produced by her stepdad, Frank Liddell, who has helmed every one of Miranda Lambert's LPs.) Sellers' sweet, vulnerable side shows through on "Something Special" and "Like the Rain," while the thrashing "Living Is Killing Me" shuts the album down with punk-inspired energy. S.B.

Album: It's About Time
Release Date: January 15th
November's CMA Awards opened with a rowdy throwback to the 1970s: Hank Williams Jr. and his friend Eric Church going back and forth on Neil Young's "Are You Ready for the Country," adding some juice to a song Bocephus originally picked up on tour with Waylon Jennings. That tune is now both opener and lead single off Williams' first album in four years. It's About Time has one other cover (Mel Tellis' "Mental Revenge"), four original Hank Jr. songs (including the over-the-top swagger of "Dress Like an Icon") and two new ones co-written by Chris Janson. The party then climaxes with a remake of Williams' autobiographical "Born to Boogie," featuring Brantley Gilbert, Justin Moore and Brad Paisley. N.M.

Album: Full Circle
Release Date: February 26th
Loretta Lynn hasn't released a new album since 2004's Jack White-produced Van Lear Rose, but she's spent much of the last decade working on a follow-up, recording 93 songs over the past four years. As it stands, the LP includes tracks as old as Doris Day's "Secret Love" and the Carter Family's "Black Jack David," plus duets with Willie Nelson and Elvis Costello and a new version of "Whispering Sea," the first song that the 83-year-old ever wrote. Hence the record's title: Full Circle. "I was sitting up in this tree fishing, believe it or not. And my husband said, 'You’re going to fall out of that tree and kill yourself,'" Lynn tells Rolling Stone. "But I sat up there and wrote 'Whispering Sea.'" N.M.

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA
One of the most anticipated albums coming down the pike, the follow-up to 2014's Metamodern Sounds in Country Music is all the more tantalizing knowing that the still-untitled project is finished, just waiting to be heard. But according to a recent interview with Simpson in GQ, the his-way-or-no-way singer-songwriter says that despite the LP being in the can, he doesn't plan on releasing it anytime soon. Instead, he's putting off re-entering the new-album media cycle for as long as he can. "I don't want to put it out just yet, because I know I'm just going to have to turn around and do what I just did all over again," he said. "Quite honestly, I need about six months at home with my family." Which means. . . a June release? We can only hope. J.H.  

Album: TBA
Release Date: Spring 2016
Brandy Clark stunned the country world with her brutally honest debut album 12 Stories and her Jay Joyce-produced follow-up, rumored to be titled Big Day in a Small Town, already seems to promise the same combination of guts, grit and gloriously crafted tales of American life. "Sorry I ain't sorry I ain't your Marsha Brady," Clark sings on "Girl Next Door," her new single. It's a badass folk confessional that's not so much a song but a declaration: take her as she is, or hit the road. In a time when women are fighting up the ranks of country radio — and being asked to do so in miniskirts and hair extensions — Clark's next album will be less battle call, more victory march. M.M.

Album: Fired Up
Release Date: March 11th
After releasing a pair of solid but underappreciated albums in Anything Goes and the particularly excellent They Call Me Cadillac in 2008 and 2010 respectively, Randy Houser finally broke through with 2013's How Country Feels. A more polished collection stuffed full of radio-ready hits and those that could have been, the album felt like vindication for one of the best hands-down singers in all of country music. Three years later, he's finally releasing Fired Up, the follow-up to How Country Feels, which features a whopping 17 songs and follows that same mass appeal template. That's certainly not a bad thing: the more fans who are exposed to Houser's dynamic voice, the better. J.H. 

Album: Ghosts of Highway 20
Release Date: February 5th 
Lucinda Williams' second double-album in a row (following 2014's Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone) is inspired by the 1,539-mile span of Interstate 20, a thoroughfare that runs from West Texas through the heart of Dixie to South Carolina. Guitarists Bill Frisell and Greg Leisz provide the atmosphere, while the ghosts come from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Era and beyond. And Williams herself is as extravagantly passionate as ever. "If My Love Could Kill" more than lives up to that title, and the closing 13-minute epic "Faith and Grace" could be one of Patti Smith's fever-dream trances. D.M.

Album: Nothing Shines Like Neon
Release Date: January 15th
Last year, Randy Rogers and Wade Bowen released a low-key, rambling journey through classic Merle covers and Texas road stories in the laid-back Hold My Beer, Vol. 1. While we wait for Vol. 2, Nothing Shines Like Neon returns Rogers to his main unit, one of the most dependable honky-tonk acts in any state: lead-off track "San Antone" dreams of a homecoming where the singer shares the stage with a "fiddle man" who plays both under the verses and in between them. The LP also includes contributions from Jamey Johnson, Alison Krauss and Jerry Jeff Walker, plus production by Nashville vet Buddy Cannon. N.M.

Album: Cayamo Sessions at Sea
Release Date: January 29th
Cayamo, the annual star-studded Americana cruise through the Caribbean (which departs Miami on January 31st), always features plenty of cool collaborations. That aspect of the experience has yielded Cayamo Sessions at Sea, which Cayamo ringleader Buddy Miller recorded onboard in 2013 and '14. Pairing Miller with Nikki Lane, Richard Thompson, Lucinda Williams and other fellow cruisers, Cayamo hits the tight-versus-relaxed sweet spot perfectly on classic covers from Porter and Dolly, Conway and Loretta, Johnny Cash, Gram Parsons and a lovely take on the Rolling Stones' "Wild Horses" — beautifully sung by Shawn Colvin. It's the next best thing to being at sea. D.M.

Album: Cautionary Tale
Release Date: January 15th
Shreveport, Louisiana, native and the son of Muscle Shoals session player James LeBlanc, Dylan LeBlanc built a music career for himself in a little over five years with his praised Rough Trade albums Pauper's Field (2010) and Cast the Same Old Shadow (2012). Recognized by his gauzy "roots music for a rainy day," LeBlanc utilized a series of life-changing events to reprogram, recondition and re-approach his songwriting perspective for his upcoming release, Cautionary Tale, due January 15th via Single Lock Records. Album collaborators Brittany Howard and Ben Tanner of the Alabama Shakes, along with John Paul White (ex-Civil Wars), bring a more stripped-down sound to the project. But it's LeBlanc's chimeric warble and hastened wisdom of the past few years that ensure the insights he collected while wandering are gathered into a unified vision. E.M.

Album: The Driver
Release Date: February 5th
With Lady Antebellum resting their wings after 747's eight-month world tour, Charles Kelley is throwing his weight behind an album of his own material. The Driver's nine songs, ranging from the Grammy-nominated title track to the stunning Leaving Nashville, point to a songwriter who's more interested in exploring the sounds of heartland country-rock than wooing a crossover pop audience. Further proof: he covers Tom Petty's "Southern Accents" with guest Stevie Nicks. But it's a duet with Miranda Lambert titled "I Wish You Were Here" that we're most anxious to hear. A.L.

Album: Hymns That Are Important to Us
Release Date: February 14th
Husband and wife duo Joey + Rory recorded the bulk of this collection last summer while Joey Martin Feek recovered from a surgery attempting to treat her cervical cancer. "I think Joey wants to capture the words and music of her childhood," spouse Rory wrote on his blog. "The music that makes this beautiful, tragic, crazy life somehow make sense." Qualifying songs include "The Old Rugged Cross," "I'll Fly Away," "I Surrender All" and "How Great Thou Art." As the disease spread, Joey recorded the rest of her vocals at home and in hotel rooms, and in October, the couple even performed them live for a final concert that will be included with the LP. At once heartbreaking and inspiring. N.M.

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA
"Real Life" was one of the most ambitious country songs of 2015: a seemingly spontaneous, half-sung jam that both celebrated and subverted its title concept. It would have made a great lead single had it not stalled at Number 17 on the Hot Country Songs chart. Owen's previous album Days of Gold played with pop, experimenting more than pandering, and his follow-up (whenever it's released) should take him further into left field. "Wait 'til you hear some of the stuff we're doing on the Jake record," songwriter Jon Nite said last summer. "There's, like, OK Computer moments." N.M.

Album: Ladies & Gentlemen
Release Date: February 5th
The Infamous Stringdusters boldly refer to themselves on their website as "The Future of Bluegrass," adding a little 'tude to a genre that can often be misjudged as staid. There's no chance of that on Ladies & Gentlemen, the Charlottesville, Virginia-based band's sixth studio album that crackles with energy — and a hefty dose of estrogen. The group enlisted a who's who of female artists to put the "ladies" in the LP title and contribute to each of the record's dozen songs. But this is no novelty concept album. Instead, it's the sound of a band expanding its reach with some of the best voices in the business: Lee Ann Womack, Joan Osborne, Joss Stone and Mary Chapin Carpenter, among them. J.H. 

Album: self-titled
Release Date: February 12th 
The first LP credited to Wynonna and her Big Noise band (which includes her drummer/husband Cactus Moser) is a wide-open power surge of crunchy blues and Americana, with plenty of the country music she sang as one-half of the Judds. Fans of the latter will revel in the gorgeous country ballad "Jesus and a Jukebox," and the harmony vocals of the Eagles' Timothy B. Schmit on the beautiful "I Can See Everything" and Jason Isbell, who contributes to the uplifting "Things That I Lean On." But it's when Wy tears loose on the bluesier numbers that affords her the chance to show she can still take it to 11. S.B.