Riley Green played guitar as a boy in rural Alabama, but he never sang along until his grandaddy Buford started pushing him.
“I never sang when I played guitar until my grandaddy started pushing me and me and him would sit around and he’d fiddle on the harmonica a little bit. That was where I got my traditional roots,” Green told Taste of Country.
Those roots run through nearly every song he has put out since. Green released his fourth studio album, That’s Just Me, on Sept. 18, and Billboard reported that his catalog has earned 5.9 billion on-demand official streams in the United States, according to Luminate. Some of his biggest songs, including “Don’t Mind If I Do,” “Worst Way” and “I Wish Grandpas Never Died,” he wrote by himself.
These are CTD’s picks for the 10 best Riley Green songs, counted down from No. 10, with the official video for every one.
10. “Break Up More Often” Turns a Stormy Fight Into a Better Night
A girlfriend drives away after a stormy fight, and by the next day the two of them have made up with more fire than they had before. Green ends the story by wondering, with a wink, whether they ought to break up more often.
It is the lightest song on this list, and it shows Green can be funny without turning a song into a joke.
9. “If It Wasn’t for Trucks” Started as a Joke About Country Music
When he plays it live, Green always introduces “If It Wasn’t for Trucks” by joking that he got tired of country music’s lack of truck songs, so he decided to write one himself.
The joke gets the laugh, and the song earns the rest. It rolls down the backroads of Jacksonville, Alabama, through the moments his truck has seen, from a first kiss to crying behind the wheel when he found out his grandpa had died, to talking to God from the bucket seat.
8. “Better Than Me” With Randy Owen Came Out of the Early Days of the Pandemic
Green wrote “Better Than Me” in the early days of the pandemic, and many listeners called it the best country song to come out of quarantine. Randy Owen sings on it with him.
It is a faith song at heart. The ballad asks the listener to look for the good even when trouble keeps rolling in, and it lands on the belief that the good Lord knows better.
7. “There Was This Girl” Was the Debut Single That Started It All
Before the hits, Green worked construction and played bars and clubs around Jacksonville, Ala. He signed a publishing deal with Warner Chappell in 2017 and a record deal with Nashville Harbor Records & Entertainment in 2018, and “There Was This Girl” became his debut single that same year.
The song follows a whiskey-chasing ladies’ man who turns into a settled-down husband over three choruses that change as he does. His albums climbed slowly after it, from No. 95 on the Billboard 200 in 2019 to No. 25 in 2024.
He told American Songwriter he was fortunate that his success came gradually, in a small town.
6. “Hell of a Way to Go” Lets His Daddy Name His Perfect Last Day
Green first played “Hell of a Way to Go” on his 2022 live album, We Out Here, and the studio version followed a couple of months later.
Most of his family songs belong to his grandfathers. This one belongs to his dad, who lists the things he would gladly take as his last taste of life, from catching bass on a glassy lake with his boy to a porch swing, a cold drink and his wife’s hand to hold.
5. “Different ‘Round Here” With Luke Combs Sent Fans Back Through His Catalog
“Different ‘Round Here” first came out as a solo song on Green’s 2019 debut album of the same name. In May 2023, he released it again with Luke Combs, who was out on tour with him that year.
The new version fit country radio, and fans went back and found the rest of his catalog. Jessi Vaughn Stevenson, a consultant at his publisher, Warner Chappell Music Nashville, told Billboard that songs about rural culture like this one and “I Wish Grandpas Never Died” had already built him a really solid fan base.
4. “Don’t Mind If I Do” With Ella Langley Put Them in Rare Company
While “You Look Like You Love Me” was still climbing the charts, Green and Ella Langley quietly released a second duet, the ballad “Don’t Mind If I Do.” Green had written it alone.
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It became his fourth Country Airplay No. 1, on the chart dated Dec. 20, 2025, and made Green and Langley only the second duo since that chart began in January 1990 to earn more than one No. 1 together, after Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani.
Coming right after “Worst Way,” it also gave him back-to-back Country Airplay No. 1s with songs he wrote by himself, a first for any artist since Taylor Swift.
Green has said none of it was planned. He told Kelleigh Bannen on Apple Music that “even having those two duets wasn’t a planned thing.”
3. “Worst Way” Gave Riley Green a Second Love Song
Green released “Worst Way” on April 1, 2024, shortly before his Way Out Here EP, and wrote it alone. He has said the idea came while he was covering Eric Church’s “Like a Wrecking Ball,” and the song keeps its sound simple, with a plain drum beat and twangy guitar under a steamy lyric.
It went Platinum and led the Country Airplay chart for two weeks in June 2025. Green explained to Holler what it changed in his live show.
“I used to say at shows before playing ‘When She Comes Home Tonight’ that this is my only love song. Now I gotta say, ‘I’ve got two!'” he said.
2. “Numbers on the Cars” Carries a Grandaddy’s Memory and a Great Uncle’s Alzheimer’s
Green’s grandaddy Lendon Bonds partly inspired “Numbers on the Cars,” a song about living with Alzheimer’s disease. In the song, it is the grandfather who forgets, but in real life it was his grandfather’s brother, Great Uncle Jess, who had the disease. Green played dominoes with him at a local store, and he watched him slowly lose his memory.
Lendon was the one who knew all the numbers on the cars, having grown up next to Talladega Superspeedway. In the song, a grandson takes his grandpa to the racetrack, and for a moment the old man knows where they are.
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Lendon got to hear it before he died, and Green counts playing it for him and the family at the Grand Ole Opry at the Ryman Auditorium among his early career highlights.
“It was me taking myself to a place where, I guess, I was hurting a little bit,” Green told Taste of Country about writing it.
1. “I Wish Grandpas Never Died” Went Viral Before It Was Even Released
“I Wish Grandpas Never Died” spread across the internet months before its official release. Green wrote it by himself, and it is one of at least three songs inspired by his grandaddies, Buford Green and Lendon Bonds, who died in 2010 and 2018.
The song is a list of wishes a boy might make, from truck beds on every car to every road named Copperhead, and it saves the hardest wish for last. Buford is the grandaddy who taught him Merle Haggard, Roy Acuff and Hank Williams, and he founded the Golden Saw Music Hall in rural Alabama, which is still open.
The grandaddy who had to push a quiet boy to sing along with his own guitar is a big part of why the song at the top of this list exists.
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