The biggest markets for country music outside the US are Canada, the UK, and Australia.

Every time I catch up with my dear friend Justin Thompson from iHeart Country Australia, he points me toward some incredible Australian country music. Honestly, the quality is usually top-tier.

Do yourself a favor and check it out. I’ve put together a playlist below to get you started before you go exploring on your own. I can assure you, it’s well worth your time.

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💨 The Stagecoach Wind Evacuation Reshapes the Festival's Most Important Saturday and Becomes Its Defining Story: Saturday night at Empire Polo Club, high winds tossing dirt and cowboy hats forced an emergency evacuation during Little Big Town's set, with screens flashing "The festival has been postponed until further notice" and thousands of fans walking out toward shuttles. About an hour later the gates reopened, with Lainey Wilson's headline set bumped to 10:30 p.m. Riley Green and Journey had their performances canceled outright, Pitbull and Gavin Adcock were delayed. Wilson then rebuilt the night live: she brought out Riley Green plus Little Big Town for Merle Haggard's "I Think I'll Just Stay Here and Drink," then sent Green back out alone for "I Wish Grandpas Never Died." The clip of that surprise mid-storm rescue dominated country social feeds through Sunday, and made Wilson's first-ever Stagecoach headline the most narratively complete set of the weekend.

🤝 Stagecoach 2026 Was a Cross-Genre Collaboration Parade Unlike Any Recent Year of the Festival: Cody Johnson, in his first Stagecoach headline, opened Friday by bringing out Rival Sons frontman Jay Buchanan for the new Amazon Music Original "Rabbit Gets the Gun," then welcomed Boyz II Men for "On Bended Knee," a moment Country Rebel called the night's "two worlds collide" highlight. Ella Langley turned her own Friday set into a viral story by skipping the expected Wallen cameo (he was on dad duty) and instead bringing out comedian Theo Von, in cowboy hat and denim, to take Riley Green's verse on "You Look Like You Love Me." Post Malone closed Sunday by pulling Shaboozey out for "I Had Some Help" and teased a new collaboration between them, Hootie and the Blowfish brought Public Enemy's Chuck D and Flavor Flav onstage, Pitbull pulled Lil Jon, and Billy Ray Cyrus performed alongside daughter Noah Cyrus. The country-as-genre conversation has rarely felt this porous in a single weekend.

✨ Shania Twain Is Named ACM Host as Women's Pre-Show Story Gathers Force, and Avery Anna Wins New Female Vocalist: On April 22 the Academy of Country Music, Prime Video, and Dick Clark Productions confirmed Shania Twain will host the May 17 ceremony at MGM Grand Garden Arena, her first time emceeing the ACMs and the show's return to Las Vegas after three years in Frisco. Three days later, Sam Barber surprised Avery Anna at the Lone Star Smokeout in Arlington with the news that she had won New Female Vocalist of the Year, securing a performance slot on the broadcast and joining the lineage of Langley, Megan Moroney, and Lainey Wilson. With Moroney leading the nominations field at nine, Miranda Lambert at eight, and Langley and Wilson at seven, country's most-watched night of the spring is now framed almost entirely around women, and confirmed performers Cody Johnson, Kacey Musgraves, Lambert, Wilson, Riley Green, and Little Big Town are joined by ACM Awards Week events centered on Riley Green's Country on the Green and the Tucker Wetmore-anchored Next Wave Beach Bash.

Eleven tracks to start with, led by Max Jackson, Tyla Rodrigues, and The Wolfe Brothers with Lee Kernaghan. Press play and let the rest of the playlist take you the rest of the way. Enjoy! Listen here!

Week of April 23 – April 29 2026 (generated: April 29)

DROPPED OUT: Kenny Chesney (#13), Jelly Roll (#17), Thomas Rhett (#18), Carter Faith (#20)
NEW ENTRIES: Post Malone (#7), Shaboozey (#9), Luke Bryan (#11), Cameron Whitcomb (#17)

Buzz Score: 99/100
Why She's Hot: The conversation about country music in 2026 is now almost unrecognizable without her at the center of it. Dandelion holds a second consecutive week atop the Billboard 200 (May 2 chart, 106,000 units, down 37%), and "Choosin' Texas" enters an eighth nonconsecutive week at #1 on the Hot 100 with Olivia Rodrigo's "Drop Dead" now positioned as the credible challenger.

Buzz Score: 95/100
Why He's Hot: A quieter week than his Tuscaloosa stadium debut, but only by his standards. "I Can't Love You Anymore" with Langley dropped Friday April 24 via Big Loud/Mercury/Republic and lands on the Dandelion reissue, and platform performance has been instant: iTunes Top 10 debut, opening week streaming meaningful even before charts process the late-week impact.

Buzz Score: 87/100
Why She's Hot: Saturday night at Stagecoach should have been the test of her first-ever headline at the festival, and weather turned it into a much bigger story. After winds forced an emergency evacuation during Little Big Town and pushed her set to 10:30 p.m., she went on to a roaring crowd, told the audience "I hope y'all sat in your cars and drank some tequila," and then mid-set rebuilt the lost slots of the evening live: she pulled Riley Green, whose own set had been canceled, plus Little Big Town for a group cover of Merle Haggard's "I Think I'll Just Stay Here and Drink," then sent Green back to center stage solo for "I Wish Grandpas Never Died." The Netflix documentary Keepin' Country Cool is now in its first full streaming week, drawing continued profile coverage. Seven ACM nominations and confirmed performer May 17, plus monthly listener growth that meaningfully accelerated week over week, place this as her strongest news cycle since the doc premiere.

Buzz Score: 82/100
Why He's Hot: His first-ever Stagecoach headline on Friday April 24 became one of the festival's signature crossover moments. He opened with "That's Texas" and worked through "Me and My Kind," "With You I Am," "Dear Rodeo," and a Charlie Daniels Band cover of "Long Haired Country Boy" before bringing out Rival Sons frontman Jay Buchanan for the new Amazon Music Original "Rabbit Gets the Gun" (released days earlier), then surprising the crowd with Boyz II Men for "On Bended Knee," a swaying nostalgia moment that immediately dominated country TikTok.

Buzz Score: 78/100
Why She's Hot: The Coachella Weekend 2 surprise set on April 18 continues paying dividends through this week as Middle of Nowhere closes in on its May 1 release via Lost Highway.

Buzz Score: 76/100
Why He's Hot: Songs About Us dropped Friday April 24 via BBRMG/Sony Nashville, his 12th studio album at 20 tracks featuring "Easier Gone" with Brittany Aldean and the title track collaboration with Luke Bryan, opening with "Anytime Soon," a Ronnie Milsap homage built around an organ intro Aldean has explicitly described as a tip of the hat.

Buzz Score: 70/100
Why He's Hot: His first-ever Stagecoach headline closed the festival Sunday April 26 with a country-immersive set built around Craig Morgan's "International Harvester" as opener, F-1 Trillion cuts including "Pour Me a Drink" with Blake Shelton and "Wrong Ones" with Tim McGraw, plus deep covers of George Strait's "Give It Away," John Michael Montgomery's "I Swear," Garth Brooks' "Rodeo," Hank Williams Jr., and Toby Keith's "Courtesy of the Red White and Blue" as closer. He brought out Jake Worthington (for the Strait cover), Braxton Keith (for "Cozy"), and capped the night with Shaboozey for a victory-lap "I Had Some Help," teasing during the moment that a new collaboration between them is already in motion.

Buzz Score: 67/100
Why He's Hot: His Saturday Stagecoach set was canceled outright when winds forced the festival's emergency evacuation, putting his Indio weekend in a frustrating position right as he was peaking off the Cowboy As It Gets Tour launch. The save came from Lainey Wilson, who pulled him onstage during her delayed 10:30 p.m. headline set alongside Little Big Town for Merle Haggard's "I Think I'll Just Stay Here and Drink," then sent him back out solo for "I Wish Grandpas Never Died," giving him the festival moment the wind had taken.

Buzz Score: 64/100
Why He's Hot: The biggest week-over-week acceleration story in the entire dataset. Stagecoach Sunday's surprise appearance during Post Malone's headline set for "I Had Some Help" gave him a platform-level reset, and he turned it into the festival's most-shared collab clip outside the Boyz II Men moment. Post Malone publicly teased a new collaboration between them. He is also up for ACM Music Event of the Year for "Amen" with Jelly Roll.

Buzz Score: 60/100
Why She's Hot: Her MCA Records signing, announced Monday April 20, was the lead headline of the April 24 MusicRow Weekly and continues to drive coverage in Variety, Saving Country Music, and across the Nashville trade press, formally aligning her future album cycle with the Mike Harris and Dave Cobb-led roster home to Stapleton, Eric Church, Carrie Underwood, and George Strait while she retains her founder role at Big Loud Texas. Her co-executive producer credit on Dandelion keeps her name woven into the dominant chart story, and "Horses and Divorces" with Kacey Musgraves on Middle of Nowhere May 1 sustains pre-release coverage.

Places 11–20 are usually paying subscribers' territory. About once a month I open the gates. This is one of those weeks. Enjoy the full Top 20.

Buzz Score: 56/100
Why He's Hot: A genuinely unusual week for an artist who has been in maintenance mode lately. The April 25 Sanford Stadium co-headline with Jason Aldean in front of more than 65,000 University of Georgia fans was a true homecoming moment, only the second concert ever held at the venue (the first was 2013, also Aldean and Bryan), and Aldean and Bryan opened the evening with a playful intro skit about who would kick off the show, traded sets, and reunited mid-night for "Drink A Beer" and the 2024 remastered Shenandoah cut "Sunday In The South" before debuting "Songs About Us," their new title-track duet from Aldean's just-released album, live.

Buzz Score: 53/100
Why He's Hot: A natural cooldown week after the Red Rocks instant sellout coverage burst that defined his prior cycle. The Lake Tahoe Amphitheatre two-night run with ERNEST (July 15–16) opened to public on-sale April 24 following the April 21 Church Choir presale, generating a smaller but real coverage echo.

Buzz Score: 50/100
Why She's Hot: A sharp pullback week. After last cycle's Flora-Bama surprise with Kenny Chesney drove the highest TikTok engagement of any country artist outside Langley and Wallen, this week saw the steepest single-week TikTok likes collapse in the dataset (-778K week over week, from 1.10M to 318K), the largest decline among any tracked artist. Monthly listener growth went sharply negative as well (-191K, the largest deceleration among headline artists), reflecting a typical post-event regression. She is not at Stagecoach, has no scheduled major release event, and her own headline tour does not begin until September. The structural ACM picture is unchanged: she still leads all artists with nine nominations including Entertainer, and Cloud 9 remains a Billboard 200 presence.

Buzz Score: 47/100
Why He's Hot: A second consecutive maintenance week. The Way I Am (March 20) continues accumulating streams in the high tens of millions, the My Kinda Saturday Night Tour rolls on, and Wembley remains the international anchor (three sold-out nights July 31 to August 2, the first country artist to sell out multiple Wembley shows).

Buzz Score: 44/100
Why He's Hot: With Heaven on Tour continues, but the week's primary news beat was a cancellation: his planned Tulsa show was called off due to severe weather concerns, drawing modest national coverage. Streaming dropped roughly 10 million week over week from 89M to 79M, the largest single-week stream decline in raw volume terms across the top 20, but his floor remains genre-elite at the second-highest absolute count in the dataset. SoundCloud plays of 820K and TikTok likes near 55K confirm sustained passive consumption.

Buzz Score: 41/100
Why He's Hot: His Friday April 24 Stagecoach set was his third-ever appearance at the festival and the strongest reception yet, mixing post-grunge country anchors "Religiously" and "Where It Ends" with a Miley Cyrus "The Climb" cover and a guest appearance from BigXthaPlug for their duet "All the Way." Backstage, the Los Angeles Times caught him as American Eagle's official spokesman in their Stagecoach pop-up.

Buzz Score: 38/100
Why He's Hot: His first-ever Stagecoach appearance Sunday April 26 made the festival's "next wave" coverage in Entertainment Focus, Billboard, and elsewhere alongside Willow Avalon, while his platform signals delivered the largest single-week Spotify stream gain across the entire top 150 of the dataset (+1.06M week over week, from 13.5M to 14.6M). Monthly listener growth came in at +484K, well into the top tier of the genre.

Buzz Score: 35/100
Why He's Hot: The Sanford Stadium opening slot for Aldean and Bryan on April 25 was his most prominent stage of the year, opposite Lauren Alaina and ahead of an estimated 65,000 fans, and the Cold Beer & Country Music headline tour now extends through summer with 14 new cities including Pittsburgh, Edmonton, and Ottawa, with Marcus King Band, Lukas Nelson, Marty Stuart, and Jake Worthington as supporting cast.

Buzz Score: 32/100
Why He's Hot: A quiet week with no new release or live event but durable institutional signals. Six ACM nominations including a fifth consecutive Entertainer nod and a record 11th straight Male Artist of the Year, with confirmed performer slot May 17. "A Song to Sing," his duet with Miranda Lambert, is in three of the major ACM categories (Single, Song, and Music Event of the Year). Streaming remains in the high 40 millions weekly, Shazam pulled in 11K (one of the highest counts in the top 20), and YouTube views above 4M reflect catalog durability rather than active campaign push.

Buzz Score: 28/100
Why He's Hot: His Stagecoach Saturday set was one of the performances delayed by the wind evacuation but ultimately did happen, sustaining recap coverage in Entertainment Focus and across the festival press, and his Country Thunder Arizona headline from earlier in the month is still cited in the broader spring festival round-up cycle. Spotify streams held in the high 9 million range and Instagram followers grew.

Methodology: Rankings based on aggregated signals from primary country news sources (MusicRow, Saving Country Music, Taste of Country, Holler, Maverick Country, Country Standard Time, Country Beat Magazine, Lone Star Music Magazine, Texas Country Music Magazine, Roots Music Magazine, Feedspot) plus secondary editorial sources (Billboard, Rolling Stone, Variety, Consequence, American Songwriter, Pitchfork, Wikipedia 2026 country events, Entertainment Focus, NME). Gmail COUNTRY-labeled newsletters read, including MusicRow Weekly. Supplementary streaming and social signals from a Viberate 7-day data (Spotify streams, monthly listener growth, YouTube views, TikTok likes, TikTok followers, Instagram likes, Instagram followers, radio spins/stations, SoundCloud, Shazam).
Buzz score formula: news volume 40%, streaming/chart position 20%, news quality/prominence 15%, social media engagement 15%, recency 10%.

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