The nominees for the 2026 Grammy Awards were announced on Friday morning (11-7), with extra interest this year in country due to how the Grammys split the Best Country Album category into two categories: Best Traditional Country Album, and Best Contemporary Country Album.
Splitting the category was a smart move, resulting in five more artists receiving nominations, and finally allowing traditional/independent country artists a seat at the big table. But this would only be a positive development if the Best Traditional Country Album category actually represented traditional country artists and fans in the nominations as opposed to just being another avenue for popular, contemporary country artists. Luckily, most of the folks who deserved nominations got them.
It’s hard to argue against Charley Crockett receiving a nomination for his album Dollar A Day, which feels like a career effort. Same goes for Margo Price. It’s not a surprise the Grammy voters find favor with Margo since she previously received a Best New Artist nomination, but she happened to also release a career best effort with Hard Headed Woman.
Margo Price doesn’t just represent herself with this nomination. She represents a host of independent country women who all released career-level efforts over the last year, including Sunny Sweeney, Kelsey Waldon, Kristina Murray, Shawna Thompson, and others that could have received nominations themselves.
Zach Top has rewritten the rules and possibilities for a traditional country artist in the mainstream, and his nomination for Ain’t In It For My Health comes strongly deserved. If there was any shoo-in for a nomination, it was Zach. After all, it was his popularity that in part made it possible for this new category to come along. He didn’t land a Best New Artist nomination like he could have, but in previous years, an artist like Top might have been overlooked entirely.
Lukas Nelson also feels like a deserving nominee for his new album, and first solo album American Romance. However, being nominated right beside pops (Willie Nelson) for his latest album, Oh What A Beautiful World, you get the sense that name recognition played a big role in how these two nominations played out. Willie deserves all the praise in the world. But were there better albums in traditional country to be nominated this year? Yes there were.
The biggest and most obvious snub—and what could have taken Willie’s place—was The Price of Admission by the Turnpike Troubadours. Just like the albums from Charley Crockett, Margo Price, and Lukas Nelson, it was a career-level effort for the boys from Oklahoma, and arguably the greatest album released over the last year. Produced by Shooter Jennings who’s had Grammy success in the past, you really feel like Turnpike should be in this class. For all we know, they came in 6th.
Best Traditional Country Album Nominees:
• Dollar A Day – Charley Crockett
• American Romance – Lukas Nelson
• Oh What A Beautiful World – Willie Nelson
• Hard Headed Woman – Margo Price
• Ain’t In It For My Health – Zach Top
The other concern with splitting Best Country Album in two was how that might leave Best Contemporary Album to be overrun by the same type of pop-oriented interlopers that dominated the country Grammy nominations last year. The other possibility was the split would actually make Contemporary Country more country, and more critically-acclaimed too. Arguably, the latter is exactly what happened.
Not only do traditional/independent/critically-acclaimed country fans have folks to root for in Best Traditional Country Album. They have folks to root for in Contemporary as well. Sure, Jelly Roll’s Beautifully Broken is hard to even consider a “country” album, and he originated in rap. But Tyler Childers just might best him with Snipe Hunter, which despite some of the “contemporary” production that pulled it out of the traditional realm, is still an album filled with plenty of Appalachian-style songwriting and traditional country instrumentation.
Miranda Lambert and Eric Church, and specifically Postcards From Texas and Evangeline vs. The Machine are easy to root for, with both receiving strong critical acclaim. Even Kelsea Ballerini’s Patterns is an album that might not appeal to true country fans, but comes with quality songwriting that represents the good side of pop country.
Best Contemporary Country Album Nominees:
• Patterns – Kelsea Ballerini
• Snipe Hunter – Tyler Childers
• Evangeline Vs. The Machine – Eric Church
• Beautifully Broken – Jelly Roll
• Postcards From Texas – Miranda Lambert
Overall, you can’t complain how this went at all. Everyone will have their own opinion about who should have been nominated. But it’s hard to argue with who was.
Stay tuned for more coverage of Grammy song categories in country, as well as Americana/Bluegrass/Folk/All Genre categories.
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