20 Country Artists Who Peaked With Their First Album

There's no shame in releasing your best album first. These 20 country stars prove a long, satisfying career is possible after dropping your signature project.

Find unbelievable commercial smashes, critical darlings and several Grammy, CMA and ACM Award-winning albums on this list of country artists who peaked early.

In some cases, the bar was set too high to ever reach again.

Chris Stapleton is a great example of the latter. Every album he's released since Traveller in 2015 has done very well commercially, and critics have lauded the new music. It's been eight years since he blew up with "Tennessee Whiskey" at the CMA Awards, however, and he's still inside the Top 20 on Billboard's Top Country Albums chart (440 total weeks on the chart, as of early October 2023) — how can you beat that?

Sam Hunt is in a similar spot with Montevallo. Thirty-one years ago, Billy Ray Cyrus released Some Gave All, and even though he's had hits and remained one of the genres most progressive stars, you don't hit 9X Platinum twice.

The Taste of Country staff scoured seven decades worth of country albums to find debuts that are iconic and feature each artist's most-well known song or songs that would identify them for years go come. A few careers were short, but important (we see you, K.T. Oslin fans) while others (Johnny Cash) stretched nearly 50 years.

Hat-tip to our friends at Ultimate Classic Rock, who recently published a list of 20 great rockers who also peaked with a debut album.