New Country Music You Need To Hear This Week From Lauren Watkins, John Morgan, Jordan Davis, The Sound & More
Lauren Watkins - If I'm Being Honest
On her new album, one of Music Row’s most compelling young writers finds a connection between the lives we show other people and the work we do when no one is watching. In the town Lauren Watkins describes on “Main Street,” even taking out the trash can become somebody else’s business. Neighbors notice the little things. They talk. And when everyone seems to know everyone, there’s pressure to make sure what they see looks all right. Watkins knows a small detail can carry a bigger truth. “Main Street” is about more than gossip; it’s about the distance between being seen and being understood. The people around you may know your routines without having any idea what your life feels like. On “Pulling Weeds,” Watkins turns that same attention inward. Instead of worrying about what the neighbors can see, she considers what she has allowed to take root: old habits, bitterness and regret. The song’s central image makes change feel like work. You have to get your hands dirty, and you have to be willing to pull up something that has been there a long time. That movement from the public to the private gives If I’m Being Honest its strongest thread. Across 12 songs she co-wrote, Watkins writes about the life happening around her and the person she is becoming within it. She also wrote “Daydreams” alone, a telling credit on a record defined by her point of view.Produced by her husband, songwriter and producer Will Bundy, the album gives Watkins’ writing an organic country setting. But the draw is her eye for what people tend to miss. She finds a story in a familiar street, then follows it somewhere more personal. Watkins has spent plenty of time introducing herself to audiences on tours with country’s biggest names. If I’m Being Honest asks listeners to come a little closer. What they find is a writer willing to look past appearances, including her own.
John Morgan - Cry Baby
Every songwriter in Nashville knows the feeling: you hear a phrase so simple and effective that you wonder how it took anyone this long to write it. John Morgan finds one on “Cry Baby.” That’s the trick. A concept this neat could easily sound like it was built in a writing room and then handed to a singer to sell. Morgan makes it feel conversational instead. The wordplay gives the song its spark, but his easy delivery keeps it from becoming a gimmick.The North Carolina native understands that a great hook has to do more than catch your ear once. It has to feel good coming back around, revealing a little more of the singer’s personality each time. On “Cry Baby,” Morgan sounds assured enough to let the idea speak for itself. It’s another reminder that he deserves more attention in a crowded country field. Morgan has a sharp writer’s ear and the instinct to know when a clever line has become a song worth hearing. “Cry Baby” makes that case with a wink and without breaking a sweat.
Jordan Davis - What Do I Do If You Don't
Most arguments end with an assumption: once everyone has cooled off, there will be another conversation. Jordan Davis catches the moment that assumption begins to unravel on “What Do I Do If You Don’t.” He’s expecting another chance after a fight, but the longer he sits with it, the harder it becomes to ignore the possibility that she may be done for good.That uncertainty gives the song its emotional pull. Davis doesn’t approach the breakup as a settled fact. He’s caught in the space before he knows the answer, rehearsing a future he hopes he won’t have to face. It’s a specific kind of vulnerability: realizing you may have taken someone’s willingness to come back for granted.The upbeat country-rock sound gives that worry some momentum. The track moves with the energy of a song you can turn up in the car, while its central question grows more anxious the longer you think about it. Davis has always had a feel for conversational storytelling, and here the title sounds less like a polished hook than a thought that escaped before he could talk himself out of saying it.There’s also restraint in what the song asks us to imagine. We don’t need a detailed account of the fight to understand what’s at stake. The uncertainty afterward is the story. Anyone who has waited for a call after saying too much will recognize how quickly confidence can turn into dread. “What Do I Do If You Don’t” may be brief, but Davis gives its question room to land. Beneath the driving country-rock track is a man confronting something he can’t fix by assuming tomorrow will go the way yesterday did.
The Sound - Everything But Love
For a moment, “Everything But Love” could make you think you’ve landed on country radio in 1993. The Sound lean into the kind of heartbreak ballad that gives a melody room to breathe and trusts three voices to carry the feeling. At its center are brothers Levi and Jacob Mills and their father, Rob, singing with the closeness that has become their calling card. Family harmony is easy to praise and harder to explain. What makes it matter here is how naturally their voices meet. Each part adds weight without crowding the others, giving the song a warmth that suits its classic country instincts. It feels rooted in the music they grew up loving, yet the performance makes a case for hearing more from them, not just more songs in a familiar style. “Everything But Love” is an important step for a trio many listeners first discovered through their covers. Written by Levi and produced by Jay DeMarcus, it lets The Sound introduce their own material with the very thing that caught people’s attention: the sound of this family singing together.
There’s a confidence in choosing a ballad for that introduction. The Sound don’t need to outrun the emotion or dress it up. They let the harmonies do the work, and they make an old-school country approach feel welcome on today’s playlist. If this is where their original music begins, keep your eyes and ears on them.
Dylan Gossett - Ramblin’
After years spent chasing the next show, Gossett returns to Austin with a record shaped by distance, love and the meaning of home. A title like Ramblin’ suggests an artist still searching for somewhere to land. For Dylan Gossett, the road has also changed the way he sees the place he came from. Written after years of touring around the world, his second album finds him back in Austin, Texas, looking at love, relationships and home with some hard-earned perspective. Gossett’s 2025 debut, Westward, established his gift for making personal stories feel expansive. Ramblin’ builds on that foundation while bringing his point of view closer to home. Its mix of Red Dirt country, Americana and folk suits a writer drawn to the details of his own life. “Love and Such” is among the record’s standouts, finding room within its larger journey for the complicated business of connection. The title track carries the restlessness at the album’s center. And by placing “All Mine” at the very end, Gossett gives this collection of songs about movement a final moment to consider what he wants to hold onto.That sequence makes Ramblin’ feel like more than a tour diary. Time away can sharpen your sense of where you belong, but coming back doesn’t mean you’re the same person who left. Gossett lets both truths live in the record. For one of country music’s fastest-rising artists, Ramblin’ is a thoughtful next chapter. The miles have given him more to write about. Returning home has given him a new way to see it.
Corey Kent - Heartland Rock & Roll
The Oklahoma native brings country grit and rock-and-roll nerve to his latest project, but its closing track reveals the heart beneath the volume. Corey Kent has spent much of his career making music that doesn’t sit neatly on one side of the country-rock line. On Heartland Rock and Roll, he stops trying to draw that line at all. The title sounds like a declaration, and the project follows through with the rough edges, warmth and restless energy that have made him an artist worth following. “Rocky Mountain Low,” his collaboration with Koe Wetzel, shows how much force Kent can put behind a song. “Empty Words” has found an audience of its own beyond the usual path of a single. Together, they make a compelling case for the bigger, bolder side of this record. But the project is more interesting when Kent lets something quieter through the cracks.
That’s why “Don’t Stop Now” feels like its heart. As the closing track, it brings the album back to the person behind its swagger. After all the grit and momentum, Kent chooses to leave listeners with a song that makes the journey feel personal. It’s a slightly unexpected way to tie up a record with rock and roll in its name, and a stronger ending for it. The push and pull between those sides gives Heartland Rock and Roll its identity. Kent can sound built for a loud room, then turn toward the kind of reflection that stays with you after the room goes quiet. His Oklahoma roots remain in the music, but this project suggests he’s growing more comfortable trusting wherever his instincts take him.
Kent has called this the record he hopes people will think of when they hear his name. The closing moments help explain why. Heartland Rock and Roll makes plenty of noise, but “Don’t Stop Now” gives that noise somewhere to land.
William Beckmann - You Only Love To Break My Heart
William Beckmann sounds like a man who knows exactly how this ends and answers the phone anyway. That’s the pull of “You Only Love To Break My Heart,” a slow-burning song about devotion that has long since stopped being good for the person offering it. Beckmann doesn’t sing as though he expects to change his lover. The hurt is familiar. So is his inability to walk away. His deep, resonant voice gives that contradiction weight. Against reverb-drenched guitars and a nocturnal Western atmosphere, the song feels intimate and cinematic at once: close enough to hear the confession, spacious enough to feel how alone he is with it. The arrangement takes its time, letting the romance and the dread settle together. What makes Beckmann one of Music City’s most intriguing emerging acts is his willingness to linger in that uneasy space. He can make a doomed relationship sound seductive without asking us to mistake it for a happy one. Even the title carries both sides of the story. He knows she breaks his heart, yet he still calls it love.“You Only Love To Break My Heart” is country noir with its guard down. Beckmann draws you in with the atmosphere, then leaves you with the more painful question: how many times can someone break your heart before staying becomes a choice of its own?
SJ McDonald - Box Of Chocolates
It’s tempting to describe yourself by the parts you like best and quietly leave the rest out. SJ McDonald has no interest in doing that on “Box Of Chocolates.” She takes the familiar idea that you never know quite what you’re going to get and turns it toward a more personal truth: neither do the people who think they have you figured out.
The song makes room for contradiction. You can be confident one day and unsure the next, easy to love in one moment and difficult in another. McDonald’s writing treats those shifting sides as part of a whole person, rather than flaws that need to be explained away. That’s what gives its message of self-acceptance some bite. Accepting yourself means being honest about every piece. McDonald has quickly become one of the sharpest new writers in Music City’s crowded field. “Box Of Chocolates” shows why. She reaches for a familiar image, finds something personal inside it and delivers the thought with the conviction of a country singer who trusts her own voice. Her vocals have an old-school strength that lets the song feel raw without losing its warmth.
There’s comfort here for anyone who has felt pressure to be easier to understand. McDonald’s answer is to stop trying to fit into one neat description. “Box Of Chocolates” celebrates the messy, unpredictable person inside the box.
Ryland Baxter - Bolly Plateau
Rayland Baxter named “Bolly Plateau” for the Tennessee hilltop where he lives and wrote the song. That matters. The place isn’t scenery added to a love story; it’s where he has had the quiet to sit with one.The third song shared from his forthcoming album True Violet, “Bolly Plateau” has the wandering spirit of Americana folk and the plainspoken intimacy of country’s great storytellers. You can hear why Bob Dylan and John Prine come to mind, but Baxter follows his own thoughts wherever they lead. The song feels lived in, as though it could only have come from someone who has spent long evenings looking out from that particular hill. At its heart is the familiar story of “a woman like you and a man like me.” Baxter makes that simple pairing feel cinematic. There’s enough tenderness and uncertainty in it to imagine an entire film unfolding around these two people: the history that brought them together, the things they cannot quite say, and the landscape they’ll remember afterward. That connection between feeling and place gives “Bolly Plateau” its staying power. Baxter returns to the ground beneath his feet to make sense of what has changed within him. It’s an evocative glimpse of True Violet, due October 23, and a reminder that sometimes the setting is part of the story you’re trying to tell.
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