Ward Thomas

Country music has had a late bloom in the UK, but twin sisters Catherine and Lizzy Ward Thomas—born minutes apart in mid-’90s Hampshire—have done plenty to help it flourish. “We’ve always had that imposter syndrome,” the duo told Apple Music when asked about England’s mid-2010s country music wave, which helped their sophomore album, 2016’s Cartwheels, become the first country record by a British artist to hit No. 1 on the UK album chart. While their early, neo-traditionalist twang, like 2014’s “Push for the Stride,” proved their roots bona fides, it was Cartwheels, which embraced a broader range of pop and rock sounds on songs like the rousing “Carry You Home," that established them as stars. In 2020, they explored the country-pop vibe further with Invitation, flexing their melody muscles on dizzyingly catchy fare like “Don’t Be a Stranger.”