Taylor Swift's "Fearless" Tops Charts for a Record 10th Week

With the Grammy Awards-induced high officially over, the charts have recessed back to where they have been going, a downward trend.   Despite this trend, there were a few highlights on the charts for country artists as Taylor Swift's "Fearless" retained its hold on the top spot of the charts.  With 41,000 more albums sold, Taylor has now held the pole position on the Billboard SoundScan Hot 200 chart for an amazing 10 weeks.  It's a new record for both a female artist and a country artist. 

The country artists rounding out the top five include Robert Plant and Alison Krauss with their duet album "Raising Sand," Darius Rucker's Gold "Learn To Live," Swift's still strong self-titled debut and Zac Brown Band with "The Foundation."

Please Note: to read album reviews of the albums mentioned below click the album titles.

The Next five Albums on the chart include two up and coming arists, two of Country music's hottest acts and Dierks Bentley with his latest album "Feel that Fire, which is the seventh most popular country album this week.  The up-and-coming artists are Jamey Johnson with "That Lonesome Song" now safely over the 300,000 albums sold mark and Lady Antebellum with their Gold self-titled debut rounding out the top 10.  The hot acts on the charts include Sugarland and their expressive "Love On The Inside" album now pushing the 1.5 million albums sold barometer while Carrie underwood is nearing the 2.7 million threshold with her sophomore album "Carnival Ride."

There are a few interesting releases to discuss and one of them is Joey+Rory's "The Life Of A Song."  Released in late 2008 on Vanguard/Sugar Hill Records, The husband-wife duo have now sold over 100,000 copies of the album, a remarkable feat given the fact that their debut single "Cheater, Cheater" barely cracked the Top 30 at radio.  Guess this goes to show that fans will go out and buy something if they really like it, radio airplay or not.  Other interesting albums on the SoundScan Hot 200 chart include Willie Nelson and Asleep At The Wheel's "Willie & The Wheel" which moved back inside the top 100 albums and actually is one of the few returning albums on the whole chart to gain sales over last week.  Pat Green's "What I'm For" continues to sell poorly but one has to think that his tongue-in-cheek single "Country Star" will help to reverse this trend.  Wynonna Judd's latest album, "Sing: Chapter 1" is a collection of some of her favorite songs and it has sold quite well considering it has received not much radio airplay at all. 

This week Jake Owen's "Easy Does It" was released to stores.  Where will it fall? Does it have a chance at a Top 10 albums debut? Check back next week to find out.