Grammy Award for Best Country Album
The Grammy Award for Best Country Album is an award presented at the Grammy Awards, a ceremony that was established in 1958 and originally called the Gramophone Awards,[1] to recording artists for quality albums in the country music genre. Honors in several categories are presented at the ceremony annually by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to "honor artistic achievement, technical proficiency and overall excellence in the recording industry, without regard to album sales or chart position".[2]
Grammy Award for Best Country Album
The award was first presented under the name of Best Country & Western Album in 1966 to Roger Miller for Dang Me/Chug-A-Lug and was discontinued the following year. In 1995 the category was revived and received its current denomination of Best Country Album. According to the category description guide for the 66th Grammy Awards (2024), the award is presented to vocal or instrumental country albums containing at least 51% playing time of new recordings, and the Grammy is awarded to the artist and producer, and to the engineer/mixer of greater than 50% playing time of the album.[3] (The list of nominees only mentions Artists).
The Dixie Chicks are the most awarded performers in this category with four wins, followed by Chris Stapleton who has three wins. Two-time award winners include Roger Miller, Lady Antebellum, Kacey Musgraves and Miranda Lambert. Canadian singer Shania Twain is the only non-American winner in this category, to date. Trisha Yearwood holds the record for most nominations, with eight. Yearwood also holds the record for most nominations without a win. The current holder of the award is Willie Nelson, who won at the 65th Grammy Awards with his seventy-second studio album A Beautiful Time.