Editor's Picks: The Best Queer Country of 2024

In spite of how it ended, 2024 couldn't have been a stronger year for queer country music. The industry accolades show it: Melody Walker has a Grammy nomination for co-writing Sierra Ferrell's "Americn Dreaming," Madi Diaz has a nod from both NPR and the Grammys for Weird Faith, and Adeem the Artist, Hurray For the Riff Raff, and Brittany Howard landed Rolling Stone's Top 100 Albums while Diaz, HFTRR, and Yasmin Williams got nods from NPR. Meanwhile, Chappell Roan is hinting at dabbling in country, which her music has never really strayed that far from.

Earlier this week, we published the reader's picks for the year's best queer country, but here are mine.

10: Ana Egge – Sharing in the Spirit

It's not often that an album gets me to cry, and Ana Egge's Sharing the Spirit is just one entry on this year's list that did so. There's a generosity of spirit that suffuses the album: whether Egge is calling for revolution, healing, or the touch of her lover's hand. Reviewer Kat Marr described it as "a terrific slice of heartfelt folk music with a continually rewarding emotional core that begs you to leave it on repeat."

9: Chris Housman – Blueneck

Chris Housman's Blueneck defined what queer country looks like if Music Row opens its doors to us. The album is a delightful collection of pop country that documents queer life – all the ups and downs, and the ways these everyday triumphs and tragedies make for hook-heavy country. Housman spoke to us about his navigating Nashville, and hints that there's a lot more to come in the future.

8: Flamy Grant – CHURCH

Flamy Grant truly comes into her own on CHURCH. We didn't get a chance to write it up here, but on No Depression I wrote that "Grant uses drag to deliver a treasure trove of disarmingly sincere music. Rather than using the artform to create an ironic distance between performer and audience member, Grant’s conviction illustrates drag as an art that can lead us to the truth." We discussed Grant's own process – and the legal pressures she's faced as a drag queen – on the podcast.

7: Jett Holden – The Phoenix

Jett Holden has been slugging it out in the trenches for decades, but The Phoenix is his first album. It's a remarkable tour de force of country, rock, folk, and, of course, Holden's one-of-a-kind voice. Moreover, it showcases Holden's imaginative storytelling and his ability to fit in the shoes of any character he writes about. That's the power of country music, after all, and Holden wields it with prowess here.

6: pine & fire – Songs From North Country

I was really taken by pine & fire's collecting Songs From the North Country. As I wrote earlier this year, "If there was ever any doubt that punk and folk are two sides of the same coin, Songs From the North Country puts those to rest." The Minnesota-based duo communicate a fiery conviction for truth and justice that we'll all need to hold on to in the coming years.

5: Stephanie Lambring – Hypocrite

Don't drive while you're listening to this Hypocrite. Stephanie Lambring's album is a stiletto to the heart as she murmurs intimate doubts about motherhood, femininity, and relationships with a casual, off-handed grace. As I wrote in my review, "Hypocrite isn’t for the faint of heart. When they said 'three chords in the truth,' they weren’t prepared for Lambring."

4: Middle Sattre – Tendencies

Middle Sattre's Tendencies is probably the album I returned to most on this list. The Austin collective explores Hunter Preuger's unflinching memoir of growing up queer and Mormon with sensitivity and – well, not quite tenderness. These are not songs about feeling better: they're a bloodletting. But we can feel the band hold space for Preuger in such a way that it's clear that vulnerability leads to strength.

3: Madi Diaz – Weird Faith

Weird Faith captured my heart from the job, when Madi Diaz spat "What the fuck do you want?" as the very first line. It's an unconventional way to start an album, but Diaz's reflections on love – which she dubs a "weird faith" – are off-kilter. That's what makes this album so stunning: there's billions of love songs but only a few can make you see the whole enterprise in a new light.

2: Hurray For the Riff Raff – The Past Is Still Alive

If you haven't listened to The Past Is Still Alive, make a date with yourself this weekend to do so. I had the opportunity to attend a listening party and interview with Alynda Mariposa Segarra where we sat in silence and listened to the whole album though. People wept. That's because Segarra distilled their grief for their father into a tender but probing meditation on memory, the past, identity, and rejecting the future oligarchs seek to impose on us.

1: Jake Blount and Mali Obamsawin – symbiont

There is nothing quite like this stunning album by Jake Blount and Mali Obamsawin. symbiont continues on Blount's path of crafting urgent Afro-futurist stories around traditional music from Black and, for symbiont, indigenous communities. Rather than dusting off the sheet music and preserving what's exactly on the page, Blount and Obamsawin weave these songs into a narrative of climate change and redemption, deftly illustrating how vibrant and alive the ancestors still are.