50 Best Country Songs About Gunfights
Legendary Country Tracks on Gun Duels
There’s a very specific tension that hangs in songs built around a shootout. It’s not all fireworks and wild bravado. Sometimes it’s slow and heavy, the kind of track where you can almost smell the dust and feel the weight of a hand hovering near a holster. The mood can swing from grim to oddly cinematic in a few bars. You hear boots scraping on wood, maybe a harmonica cutting through, and it feels like you’ve stepped into the middle of something you shouldn’t have seen.
Some of these songs run on pure adrenaline, racing toward the trigger pull with fiddles or steel guitars keeping pace. Others take their time, letting you sit in that space where the clock ticks too loud and every breath feels like a gamble. The best ones hold their ground in that in-between, where danger and pride blur together. It’s a tradition that stretches across pop, rock, country, and R&B songs, but in country, it often comes with a grit that sticks long after the last note.
You get everything from outlaw swagger to stark storytelling, and each track shapes its own version of the standoff. No two feel the same, and that’s what makes digging through them addictive. These are the songs that pull you into the dirt road tension, the showdown heat, and the echoes after the smoke clears. Here are the best country songs centered on gunfights.
Top 10 Country Gunfight Songs
1. 'Big Iron'—Marty Robbins
2. 'Don't Take Your Guns to Town'—Johnny Cash
3. 'El Paso'—Marty Robbins
4. 'The Devil's Right Hand'—Steve Earle
5. 'Pancho and Lefty'—Townes Van Zandt
6. 'Billy the Kid'—Marty Robbins
7. 'Gunslinger's Glory'—The Dead South
8. 'The Last Gunfighter Ballad'—Guy Clark
9. 'Running Gun'—Marty Robbins
10. 'The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance'—Gene Pitney
Country Songs About Outlaws #11—20
11. 'I've Got No Use For The Woman'—Marty Robbins
12. 'Fast Hand'—Cody Jinks
13. 'Wanted Man'—Johnny Cash
14. 'The Ballad of Dood and Juanita'—Sturgill Simpson
15. 'The Road Goes on Forever'—Robert Earl Keen
16. 'When a Cowboy Trades His Spurs for Wings'—Gillian Welch and David Rawlings
17. 'Cool Water'—Marty Robbins
18. 'Doolin' Dalton'—Eagles
19. 'A Boy Named Sue'—Johnny Cash
20. 'Gunpowder & Lead'—Miranda Lambert
Best Country Gunfighter Songs #21—30
21. 'Streets of Laredo'—Marty Robbins
22. 'The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia'—Vicki Lawrence
23. 'Two Gunslingers'—Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
24. 'Red Headed Stranger'—Willie Nelson
25. 'Copperhead Road'—Steve Earle
26. 'Long Black Veil'—Lefty Frizzell
27. 'Marie Laveau'—Bobby Bare
28. 'Mr. Shorty'—Marty Robbins
29. 'Two Black Cadillacs'—Carrie Underwood
30. 'The Hanging Tree'—Marty Robbins
Country Songs About Western Duels #31—40
31. 'The Master's Call'—Marty Robbins
32. 'The Ballad of Davy Crockett'—Tennessee Ernie Ford
33. 'Billy Gray'—Robert Earl Keen
34. 'The Gunslinger'—Shooter Jennings
35. 'The Coward of the County'—Kenny Rogers
36. 'Thunder Rolls'—Garth Brooks
37. 'Outlaw State of Mind'—Chris Stapleton
38. 'The Ballad of Paladin'—Johnny Western
39. 'The Long Haul'—Ian Munsick
40. 'Wanted Man'—Doc Watson
Modern Outlaw Country Songs #41—50
41. 'Pistol Packin' Mama'—Al Dexter
42. 'Cocaine Blues'—Johnny Cash
43. 'Duel with the Devil'—Dark Outlaw
44. 'Let My Bullet Speak'—The Campfire Cowboy
45. 'The Gambler'—Kenny Rogers
46. 'Hurricane'—Brandi Carlile
47. 'Shot Gun Boogie'—Tennessee Ernie Ford
48. 'God's Gonna Cut You Down'—Johnny Cash
49. 'The Outsider'—Clint Black
50. 'Folsom Prison Blues'—Johnny Cash
© 2025 Carson McQueen
