See all our 16th Annual Country Music Critics' Poll coverage: the full list of results, select factoids from the results, our interview with Chris Stapleton, our feature about how Stapleton and Jason Isbell triumphed without country radio and our critics' comments.
More country artists than usual were able to combine commercial and critical success in 2015. Nine different acts finished in both the Top 40 of Billboard's Top [Selling] Country Albums and the Top 40 of the poll's Best Album category: Chris Stapleton (No. 9 Billboard/No. 1 Poll), Kacey Musgraves (No. 26/No. 4), Don Henley (No. 23/No. 14), Eric Church (No. 33/No. 5), Jason Isbell (No. 38/No. 2), Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard (No. 35/No. 6), Zac Brown (No. 3/No. 39), George Strait (No. 25/No. 26) and Alan Jackson (No. 32/No. 19). Just missing the cutoff were Dwight Yoakam (No. 43/No. 12) and Carrie Underwood (No. 14/No. 43)
Some albums sold a lot of records without impressing the critics. The discrepancy was especially noticeable for Luke Bryan's Kill the Lights (No. 2 Billboard/No. 75 Poll) and Garth Brooks' Man Against Machine, (No. 5/No. 119).
On the other hand, some artists impressed the critics without selling many records. Seven of the Top 15 finishers in the poll's Best Album category failed to show up in Billboard's Top 50: Ashley Monroe's The Blade (No. 3), Rhiannon Giddens' Tomorrow Is My Turn (No. 7), James McMurtry's Complicated Game (No. 8), The Mavericks' Mono (No. 9), Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell's The Traveling Kind (No. 11), Cam's Untamed (No. 13) and Turnpike Troubadours' The Turnpike Troubadours (No. 115). To be fair, the Cam album would probably have made the Billboard list if it hadn't been released so late in the year.
Sturgill Simpson, who won Best Album, Best Male Vocalist and Best Songwriter categories in the Scene's 2014 Critics' Poll, retained some of his support in 2015 despite not releasing a new album. This year he was voted the No. 5 Best Live Act, the No. 12 Artist of the Year and No. 15 Male Vocalist. Miranda Lambert, who last year was the Artist of the Year and the runner-up in both the Best Album and Best Singles categories, didn't release a new album either. But she too retained some support: This year she was voted No. 7 Best Single, No. 7 Best Female Vocalist and No. 15 Artist of the Year.
In the 2013 Critics' Poll, Kacey Musgraves, Brandy Clark and Ashley Monroe were the first trio to sweep the Best Album, Best New Act and Artist of the Year categories in the same year. Musgraves and Monroe released their follow-up albums in 2015 and maintained their critical acclaim. The two women were voted 2015's No. 3 and No. 4 Artist of the Year respectively, as well as the No. 2 and No. 1 Female Vocalist with the No. 4 and No. 3 Best Album. Musgraves and Monroe finished No. 4 and No. 5 in the Best Songwriter category, followed by their frequent co-writers Shane McAnally at No. 6 and Clark at No. 7.
Bob Dylan dominated the voting for the year's Best Reissue, capturing the top two spots with Dylan, Cash, and The Nashville Cats: A New Music City, followed by The Cutting Edge 1965-1966: The Bootleg Series Vol. 12. Sun Records and its alumni also made a strong showing: The compilation Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock 'n' Roll came in at No. 8. It included songs by Johnny Cash (who shared the No. 1 reissue with Dylan and had the No. 15 reissue with Live in Denmark 1971), Jerry Lee Lewis (who had the No. 6 reissue with At Sun Records: The Collected Works) and Roy Orbison (who had the No. 7 reissue with The MGM Years).
Four different record companies each placed two albums in the poll's Top 15: Mercury Nashville, Warner Bros., Big Machine/Dot/Valory and Nonesuch. Nonesuch, a New York-based boutique label that has never had much luck with country radio, is the obvious outlier. Nashville's major labels dominated the Best Singles category, winning 14 of the top 15 positions — the only breakthrough being Southeastern/Thirty Tigers Records with Jason Isbell's No. 2 single, "24 Frames."
The extended Earle family got votes for three albums in this year's poll: Steve Earle and the Dukes' Terraplane came in at No. 28, bested by his ex-wife Allison Moorer, whose Down to Believin' came in at No. 25. Steve's son Justin Townes Earle came in at No. 174 with Absent Fathers, though it should be noted that it was released as the second half of a project on a small label in January.
String bands had a down year in this year's poll. The top string-band album in the Best Albums category was the Punch Brothers' The Phosphorescent Blues at No. 32, followed by Robert Earl Keen's Happy Prisoner: The Bluegrass Sessions at No. 34, The Deslondes' The Deslondes at No. 40, and The Lone Bellow's Then Came Morning at No. 43, which tied them with The Muscle Shoals Sessions by Chris Stapleton's former string band The SteelDrivers. Punch Brothers, The Deslondes and The SteelDrivers did finish at Nos. 9, 10 and 12, respectively, in the Best Duos and Groups category.
The top albums from artists younger than 35: Ashley Monroe's The Blade (No. 3), Kacey Musgraves' Pageant Material (No. 4), Maddie & Tae's Start Here, (No. 10), Cam's Untamed (No. 13), The Turnpike Troubadours' The Turnpike Troubadours (No. 15) and John Moreland's High on Tulsa Heat (No. 16).
The top seven albums from artists older than 50: Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard's Django and Jimmie (No. 6), James McMurtry's Complicated Game (No. 8), Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell's The Traveling Kind (No. 11), Dwight Yoakam's Second Hand Heart (No. 12), Don Henley's Cass County (No. 14), Alan Jackson's Angels and Alcohol (No. 19) and Joe Ely's Panhandle Rambler (No. 20). Raul Malo turned 50 in August after The Mavericks' Mono (No. 9) was released in February.
Eighty-two music journalists voted in the 16th annual Country Music Critics' Poll. They wrote for big coastal newspapers such as The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, as well as smaller heartland dailies such as the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Woonsocket Call and Lincoln Journal Star. They wrote for big magazines like Rolling Stone, Billboard and Smithsonian and for music websites such as Pitchfork, Country Universe and PopMatters.
Stapleton and Isbell also found a place in the Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop Poll, which was this year ruled by rapper Kendrick Lamar and indie-rocker Courtney Barnett. Isbell finished No. 11 in that poll's Top Albums category, while Stapleton finished No. 24. Also sneaking into the hip-hop, rock and R&B-dominated Top 40 were Kacey Musgraves (No. 23) and Ashley Monroe (No. 36). Strangely, though, the Voice's Top 20 Singles list completely shut out country music, a genre far more committed to singles than rock.
