We’re making up for 0ur slow start this year with a series of daily posts featuring two new single reviews each.
It’s a strong start for 2025 right out of the gate, with a potential career-making hit from Kashus Culpepper and a career-best comeback single from Alison Krauss & Union Station.
“After Me?”
Kashus Culpepper
Written by Mark Addison Chandler and Kashus Culpepper
JK: He’s released a few singles since “After Me?” first dropped late last summer– we covered “Pour Me” in our final Singles Review Roundup of 2024– but it took until mid-January for this one to get a proper push at AAA and Americana radio.
And I’m real not mad about that.
Culpepper’s gravelly voice is a wonder, but what’s most distinctive about what he’s released to date is the cleverness of his songwriting. His ability to use surprising turns-of-phrase and funny asides to elevate familiar country tropes– the drinking metaphors of “Pour Me,” the wedding-objections here– truly stands out among a legion of new songwriters who are far more interested in assimilation.
For a litany of reasons, I’m shocked that Big Loud signed Culpepper, but they’ve got a legitimate new star on their hands if they actually back him. “After Me” is the best song in this vein since “Speak Now” a lifetime ago– and it’s better than that one, too– and deserves to give Culpepper a breakthrough hit. A
KJC: Kashus Culpepper arrives to give Kane Brown a run for his money as heir to the Conway Twitty throne.
The way this man soulfully growls over a just twangy enough background recalls the best of Twitty’s heartbreak ballads like “Don’t Take it Away” and “She’s Got a SIngle Thing in Mind.” His voice drips with betrayal as the woman he loves marries another man, elevating an already compelling lyric that uses familiar tropes in a fresh and distinctive way.
The first single review of the year, and we already have a contender for the year-end list. A
“Looks Like the End of the Road”
Allison Krauss & Union Station
Written by Jeremy Lister
KJC: Melancholy child that I am, there are few vocalists who can reach as deeply into my moody soul as Krauss on a goodbye song. The thing about Krauss is that she’s done so many brilliant records in this vein – her cover of “Ghost in This House” raises goosebumps in all the right places – that a new record has the challenge of living up to her own legacy, which is her only real competition at this point in her career.
What a victory this record is, standing proudly among her strongest performances. Krauss is so intelligent with her phrasing that she delivers a sophisticated lyric with enough raw honesty to touch the heart if the mind can’t be reached.
Nobody does this kind of music better than Alison Krauss, especially when backed by Union Station, and they’ve rarely, if ever, done it better than this. A
JK: I know I harp on what godawful singers we’re currently subjected to in the country mainstream, but more than two dozen listens in, I remain in just slack-jawed awe at how undiminished Krauss’ voice is on this new single. Like Trisha Yearwood, Raul Malo, Suzy Bogguss, and a handful of other stars of her generation, Krauss’ flawless technique has allowed her to preserve her instrument such that, in 2025, she’s singing as well as she ever has, and certainly better than upstarts 30 years her junior.
And the song? It’s gorgeous. It’s of a piece with “Restless” and “If I Didn’t Know Any Better” as one of her finest moments on record, and who else does this precise type of exquisite melancholy? She’s an icon who could be taking a victory lap at this point in her career, but she’s out here recording new career-best work. A
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