Taylor Swift Continues to Top Country Albums Chart

The Sales numbers are out for this week and while Taylor Swift has dropped to the 5th position on the charts, it isn’t because she’s not selling more albums but because the new release cycle for the music industry seems to finally be back on point as three of the Top four albums on the SoundScan chart are new releases.  The other release of the Top four is U2’s album, which is third on the chart behind Kelly Clarkson’s chart-topper, and The-Dream’s sophomore release.  J. Holliday’s sophomore album is the 4th place-winner this week.  

Taylor’s “Fearless,” which spent 13 weeks atop the SoundScan Hot 200 charts, continues to dominate the SoundScan country albums chart.  Neko Case’s album, which debuted at number three on the charts last week, placed 17th on the overall chart but second on the country chart.  It was followed by Zac Brown Band’s “The Foundation” and Darius Rucker’s “Learn To Live” while Swift’s four million selling debut album rounds out the Top Five Country albums chart.

Carrie Underwood’s “Carnival Ride” moved up an impressive number of positions on the chart thanks to a 25% sales increase.  The album has now moved nearly 2.7 million albums.  Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’ “Raising Sand” continues its decent down the charts but still is the seventh most popular country album and has sold over 1.3 million albums.  Jamey Johnson continues to sell on the charts, despite not having a single to support “That Lonesome Song” while Rascal Flatts’ “Greatest Hits, Vol. 1” album jumped into the Country Top 10 this week with a 9% sales increase over the previous week.  Lady Antebellum retains their Top 10 status with their year-old self-titled Gold debut record.  

Rascal Flatts’ sales can probably be attributed to the fact that they sold over 160,000 copies of their digital single for “Here Comes Goodbye,” the first ever digital single of Rascal Flatts’ career as their label Lyric Street Records prefers to not release singles prior to an album drops.  It’s part of a sales strategy to get people excited for the release of “Unstoppable” April 7, 2009. Other interesting albums on the charts appear below.  Like Jamey Johnson, Joey+Rory continue to sell remarkably well considering they’ve only had one hit single.  Next week, Randy Travis’ “I Told You So: The Ultimate Hits of Randy Travis” should benefit from American Idol to give Randy a high placing album.