Apple Ignores Country: Countrytown Launches Its Own Top 100

The Apple Music 100 Best Albums was revealed yesterday to great international fanfare, but while it has done a fantastic job redressing some historic balance ignorances for women and people of colour, it has erased country music from history.

So Countrytown is going to change that.

The closest the list came was Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour at #85… her pop crossover. Great album, but really? That’s it? You might want to argue for Taylor Swift’s 1989 or The Eagles Hotel California, but we’re not going to gratify that with a response. So, apparently, not a single historically great or significant thing happened in country music until 2018?

No Johnny Cash? No Dolly Parton? No Waylon Jennings? No Garth Brooks? No Shania Twain? What about Ray Charles’ Modern Sounds in Country if we’re going to talk about influence and diversity? We here in Australia are used to American-centric culture overlooking our local catalogues…. if it didn’t, perhaps Kasey Chambers’s The Captain or Barricades and Brick Walls should get a look in? Or Lee Kernaghan’s The Outback Club? Ahem…. Slim Dusty?

Ironically, Apple Music is one of the best streaming services for making country music visible in mainstream playlists, so this really seems like a swing and a miss.

So Countrytown will fix it. We’re doing our own Countrytown Top 100 COUNTRY albums of all time. And we want your help!

Our list will be compiled through the votes of readers, industry and writers. All you need to do to have your say is give us your top five country albums of all time. We don’t just want the big sellers; we want the albums that really gel together as classic and influential tomes of their time. International blockbusters? Aussie classics? It’s up to you to decide. Do you have a mate who’s a country music aficionado? Muster them up because Countrytown wants to redress the balance and show that the fastest-growing genre in the world has been around long before Beyonce and Taylor Swift.

VOTE NOW for your five best country music albums of all time, and we’ll give you the results very soon here on Countrytown. Bring on the debate!