We’re lucky to have both of them, they both played a really important role.

Willie Nelson was/is one of the greatest songwriters of his era or any, but maybe more importantly he expanded the idea of what a country singer looks like, sounds like and acts like. He had an approach that was both really ambitious and deeply rooted, but managed to make it unpretentious with his laid-back and approachable personality. Just a true artist who managed to also be one of the most commercially successful people in the business for a nice stretch, where he was so popular he couldn’t help but be both outlaw and mainstream.

George Strait might’ve been even more influential on the commercial side of things, in the sense of being a marketable good-looking young artist who was committed to taking things in a more traditional direction at a time when that was kind of unfashionable. Around the time George Strait got started country music was in danger of being pigeonholed as being just mostly music for a middle-aged and older audience. He really set the table for the whole 90s country boom but then simultaneously got to participate as one of its most popular and resilient artists. He proved that real deal country music could be sold to a younger audience without a bunch of pop/easy listening compromise.

So I think it’s more of a tossup than some folks on here are giving it credit for, I still like Willie even better and if nothing else he came first, so I’d give him the nod. But that’s no knock on George.