a quick guide to Sturgill Simpson
A friend recently asked if I was familiar with the new Johnny Blue Skies album. I told him that not only did I really like it, but that Johnny Blue Skies is actually that Sturgill Simpson guy I'm often going on about in the group chat we share. He was like, "oh, interesting," and then went about his day listening to the album we both enjoy.
And me? Well, me being totally normal, I wrote 700 words covering every album the man has put out to date, a guide to exploring the music of Sturgill Simpson if you happen to be the kinda person who just discovered his new album under the JBS moniker. Like I said, totally normal.
Truth be told, I'm fascinated with the dude and have been trying to find an excuse to write about him anyway, so this was a fun little exercise. It made me think about his music in new ways, and has laid the groundwork for thinking about him more deeply if a bigger opportunity presents itself down the line. And since this thing didn't have a home, I figured I'd share it with you.
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High Top Mountain (2013)
A honky-tonk-ass, hard-country, self-funded debut record straight outta Nashvegas that Sturgill has disavowed a bit in the years since. It's a real gem, though. Listening to this and Mutiny After Midnight back to back, it’s truly wild that the same guy made both and only 13 years apart. If country radio sounded like this, I would listen to country radio all the time.
Top Tracks: “Life Ain’t Fair and the World is Mean,” “You Can Have the Crown,” “Some Days”
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Metamodern Sounds in Country Music (2014)
In which our hero tries to ascend to a higher plane of existence via drugs and spirituality, only to find out it’s turtles all the way down. Channeling Waylon Jennings and Ray Charles and a handful of extraterrestrials, this is, as one smart critic put it, “country music for when you wanna stare at your hand for three hours.”
Top Tracks: “Turtles All the Way Down,” “Long White Line,” “It Ain’t All Flowers”
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A Sailor’s Guide to Earth (2016)
To illustrate how this album was a restless, transcendent turning point, I’m gonna ask you to pull up his 2017 SNL performance of “A Call to Arms.” This record’s got funky-ass horns, a gorgeous Nirvana cover, and a knowing wink to anyone who’s paying attention. As it turns out, it was a warning for what came next.
Top Tracks: “Keep It Between the Lines,” “All Around You,” “Brace for Impact (Live a Little)”
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SOUND & FURY (2019)
It’s the best record to check out after Mutiny, given their similar vibes. It’s got an accompanying dystopian anime samurai film on Netflix. It’s got a John Prine co-writing credit on one of the songs. It’s an absolute goddamn party at the end of the world. It’s maybe his best album.
Top Tracks: “Sing Along,” “Make Art Not Friends,” “Mercury in Retrograde”
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Cuttin’ Grass, Vol. 1 & 2 (2020)
These two records include a few dozen of his songs re-envisioned as bluegrass, complete with absolutely killer players. While beautiful and great, I don’t consider them super crucial to the Sturgill experience—more like a treat for super fans when they’ve worn out the other records.
Top Tracks: “All Around You,” “I Don’t Mind,” “Oh Sarah”
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The Ballad of Dood & Juanita (2021)
An ambitious concept album about a sharpshooter and his lady, Rolling Stone called it “the most natural and most baffling record he’s ever made,” lol. It’s a release that reminds me how much I respect the guy's talent and admire his predilection for reinvention, but also I don’t return to it all that much.
Top Tracks: “One in the Saddle, One in the Ground,” “Shamrock,” “Juanita”
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Passage du Desir (2024)
“Gonna hop on my scooter, go down to the store,” he sings here on one of the most Jimmy Buffett-ass (complimentary) songs of all time. “When people say, ‘Are you him?’ I say, ‘Not anymore.” Maybe a little on the nose for his first proper Johnny Blue Skies release, but then again, there are loads of fascinating lost identity themes on this album. It’s a proper Sad Boy record, and I don’t think I realized how much I loved it until I started typing this blurb. Elsewhere, a mournful guitar solo precedes our dude describing the loss of a loved one with extreme profundity: “There’s no happy endings, only stories that stop before they’re through.” Fuck. What if this is actually his best album?
Top Tracks: “Scooter Blues,” “Jupiter’s Faerie,” “Right Kind of Dream”
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Mutiny After Midnight (2026)
Goofy lyrics, sickening grooves, solid political commentary, and sweat-soaked horniness all over the place. It's a high water mark of boogie-woogie southern rock, and I’m excited to hear these songs live in the fall, because they sound like they were written expressly to be jammed on in concert.
Top Tracks: “Excited Delirium,” “Viridescent,” “Situation”
