After the 2023 Country Music Association Awards nominations came out, it appears Nashville is moving closer to the world of artists drawing on more personal life experience. That “credibility” factor that sometimes eludes—and vexes—the Music Row industrial complex when it comes to Grammy time may not be a factor when the Recording Academy drops this year’s Best Country Album nominees.

With Jelly Roll mining a life of crying for help and redemption after his felony convictions, Whitsitt Chapel offers one of the most Merle Haggard-esque modern country albums this century. An outlier with a back story who’s also topped the rock charts, he reaches beyond genres to offer hope with an almost-emo delivery.

Lainey Wilson, too, is an outlier who wrote songs about working incredibly hard in rural America to find a place in the world. A strong woman who writes with Loretta Lynn frankness and Dolly Parton detail of how life works, Bell Bottom Country shows young women a way to thrive beyond looking pretty.

Equally potent on the distaff side, Ashley McBryde’s The Devil I Know explores the reality of chasing the dream the old-fashioned way, the small town Arkansas truths that sustain her and hypocrisies that amuse her. A lean, rocking take on country that’s as much Bonnie Raitt’s blues as Wynonna’s traditional soul, McBryde has been nominated in this category with all three of her previous albums.

That rock space in country music has proved fertile for 10-time Grammy nominees Brothers Osborne. With John’s meaty guitar work and T.J.’s sonorous vocals, they can swing from hard party-down on “It Ain’t My Fault” to introspective on the self-emerging “Younger Me.” Now with their self-titled album, the pair collect the best of all they are for what could be their third Country Album nomination.

Obviously, three streaming behemoths are all poised to appear in the Best Country Album category as well. Morgan Wallen’s One Thing at a Time has been ubiquitous since it dropped with “Last Night” topping the overall singles chart. People who don’t like country love this guy’s easy-to-enjoy blend, and he’ll have rap and EMD votes from myriad collaborators from Lil Durk to Diplo.

Luke Combs falls in right behind him, a slightly more mature take on being young and alive. Beyond his No. 1 pop smash with Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car,” his “The Kind of Love We Make” expands how the devil-may-care songwriter sees the world. Gettin’ Old shows how much life can contain, building on last year’s Country Album nod for Growin’ Up.

Furthest outlier Zach Bryan, the three-tours-of-duty Navy man whose raw truth songwriting ignited a full-bore supernova explosion, returns with a self-titled project that’s been everywhere since dropping two weeks ago. Also topping the overall singles chart with a Kacey Musgraves duet “I Remember Everything,” Bryan’s beaten-down anti-heroes and working-class dreamers have quickened an audience that doesn’t follow country, but is plugged into music. After “Something in the Orange” scored a Country Solo Performance nom last year, Grammy could come to the table for Album.

For Jordan Davis, who borrowed from John Prine for his CMA Award-winning “Buy Dirt,” Bluebird Days consolidates that grandpa wisdom, offering a leavened take on how we love, fall apart and put it back together, face wreckage in our daily lives and somehow see the sweetness in the world. Using kindness as a compass and a baritone voice that lands between James Taylor and Don Williams, he’s always been a writer first—and it creates a unified project that may connect with voters who want hometown values without treacle.

Twenty-three-year-old Bailey Zimmerman worked an oil pipeline hard enough to be made supervisor at 21. He brings that intensity to his music, his way of loving hard and fighting to have a place in the world. Religiously, his Warner Nashville debut, captures it all as one perfect song cycle of a kid reckoning with a life that’s not a fairy tale.

Kelsea Ballerini’s end of the fairy tale, Rolling Up The Welcome Mat, was a deeply personal sorting through the divorce she found herself enmeshed in. Written and co-produced with friend Alysa Vanderheym, it was never intended as a mainstream release, but struck a nerve with fans and critics. Painful, honest, vulnerable, the former Country Album nominee could return to the category.

Wild cards. Always wild cards—the things we don’t see coming. Here are two to consider: Tanya Tucker’s Sweet Western Sound produced with Shooter Jennings and Brandi Carlile takes the wilder side of the recent Country Music Hall of Fame member and builds on the team’s 2020 Best Country Album win for While I’m Livin’.

Tyler Childers whose hard Appalachian country is as punk rock intense as Dwight Yoakam mainlining Henry Rollins. Unflinching, Rustin’ In The Rain veers closer to Country Squire than his brilliantly iconoclastic Long Violent History and three different Can I Take My Hounds To Heaven? With “In Your Love,” though, he shows he has a heart that beats true for country’s essence and he could emerge—as Ricky Skaggs did—as a fierce protector of the its roots.

PHOTO CREDITS:
Jelly Roll, Lainey Wilson: Rich Polk
Ashley McBryde: Katie Kauss
Brothers Osborne: Kevin Mazur
Zach Bryan: Courtesy of Zach Bryan