Country Charts Remain Rascal Flatts' Domain

As expected, last week’s remarkable chart data was due to April 5^th’s broadcast of the Academy of Country Music Awards.  As a direct result, every country album, except for Darius Rucker’s “Learn To Live,” experienced a loss in sales.  Some releases, like Rascal Flatts’ “Unstoppable,” saw remarkable drops.  Still, while the success wasn’t there like it was the previous week, Country music continues to place a remarkable ¼ of all music releases in the Top 50 of the Nielsen SoundScan Top 200 Albums chart.

The previously mentioned Rascal Flatts’ retained the third most popular album falling behind only the Hannah Montana Soundtrack and the new release from TV’s “Making The Band” stars Day 26.  Rounding out the Top 5 country albums on the Nielsen SoundScan charts are Jason Aldean with “Wide Open,” Taylor Swift and “Fearless,” Keith Urban with his three-week-old “Defying Gravity” and Carrie Underwood with her nearly two-year-old album “Carnival Ride.”

The next five country albums on the Nielsen SoundScan Top 200 Albums chart include Rucker’s album, which experienced a 9% gain in sales over last week, Sugarland’s “Love On The Inside,” now the holder of three popular singles, the Zac Brown Band’s newly minted gold record “The Foundation,” Taylor Swift’s three-year-old quadruple platinum self-titled debut and Lady Antebellum’s recently gold self-titled record, which has given fans the hits “Lookin’ For A Good Time,” “Love Don’t Live Here” and the current single “I Run To You.”

Despite his sales drop this week, Jamey Johnson has reason to celebrate as his sophomore album “That Lonesome Song” continues it’s remarkable ride on the charts, despite not having a truly major hit.  The album which gave us “In Color” and “High Cost Of Livng” has now been certified Gold (click to read).  Despite major appearances on high profile television programs to support his new release “Son of a Preacher Man” and his topical hit “Shuttin’ Detroit Down,” John Rich’s album continues to slowly fall of the charts and after only three-weeks on, it sits at under 70,000 copies sold.  I guess those who wanted to buy the single have done just that, bought the digital single and are taking a wait and see approach to the rest of the album. 

Rounding out our “interesting” release section of our weekly “chart watch” are Kenny Chesney with his “Lucky Old Sun” album, which gave fans two #1 hits in the form of “Everybody Wants To Go To Heaven” and “Down The Road” but is now being replaced by a 2^nd Greatest Hits project and single.  Chesney’s album has now sold nearly 700,000 copies and is also one of the few country albums to rise on the charts as it jumps 22 places despite a marginal sales decrease for the week.  Trace Adkins’ “X” is another interesting record for the album which features the hits “Muddy Water” and “Marry For Money” barely holds onto its place in the Top 200 albums tally despite the high profile ACM awards showstopper “’Til The Last Shot’s Fired” being on the record.  Roughstock favorites Joey+Rory continue to find themselves on the Hot 200 chart with their 24-week-old “Life Of A Song” album now having sold over 140,000 albums despite not having a second hit single yet.   

With no really large releases for another couple weeks it will be interesting to see how Country Music holds up on next week’s charts. Until then, so long.