“24 Frames” by Jason Isbell

"24 Frames" comes from Something More Than Free, the album Jason Isbell released in July 2015, and it's his song start to finish: he wrote the words and the music alone and sings it himself. Dave Cobb produced it, Matt Ross-Spang engineered with Mike Stankiewicz assisting, and Pete Lyman added extra mixing.

The result is lean and unfussy, the song rolling along bright and easy while the writing does the heavy lifting, the kind of plainspoken, clear-eyed songcraft that doesn't need to raise its voice to land. Countdown listeners picked up on it the year it came out and have held on to it ever since.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz.