The Best Americana has never been better with the quality of music, diversity of styles, and the artists’ demographics in terms of race and gender.
For Valerie June and bell hooks before her, joy and care are vital forces for survival. As such, June’s album affirms love, care, and joy as radical, resistant acts.
Despite a global pandemic, musicians were far more active in 2021 and had time to create their finest work. It resulted in some of the best albums in years.
Any list of the year’s best Americana albums inevitably contains a sprawling biome of country, folk, soul, blues, R&B, bluegrass, and roots-rock.
These 15 folk albums are the year’s best because they represent folk music’s expanding roots while best serving a unifying, underlying hope.
In Americana music the present is female. Two-thirds of our year-end list is comprised of albums by women. Here, then, are the women (and a few men) who represented the best in Americana in 2017.
