Keith Urban "Defies Gravity" with First Billboard SoundScan #1 Album

With "Defying Gravity," Keith Urban has, for the third time, found a home atop the Hot Country Albums chart while also scoring the pole positon on the Neilsen SoundScan All genre Hot 200 chart for the very first time.  With 171,525 units sold, KU was able to hold off Prince's Target-exclusive 3 disc album "Lotus Flow3r."   Taylor Swift's sales numbers rebounded to find her back in the Top 10 with her 21 week old triple platinum effort "Fearless."  Rodney Atkins' "It's America" came in 15th on the chart with sales in excess of 33 thousand units sold.  The Zac Brown Band continues to sell well as their 20 week old album was just certified gold while actual sales are nearing the 400 thousand mark.  Rounding out Country's top 5 albums on the chart is Carrie Underwood and her 1.5 year old release "Carnival Ride."

While none of these albums really benefited from one of the most successful ACM Award shows in recent memory (that will happen next week), the artists were joined by John Rich and his two-week old "Son of a Preacher Man," Martina McBride's "Shine," Swift's two and a half year old self-titled debut, Darius Rucker's "Learn To Live," and Sugarland's Love On The Inside. These 10 releases gave country music 20% of the Top 50 albums, which is right on par with R&B/rap as the two most successful genres selling albums these days. 

Other interesting releases on the chart this week include Jamey Johnson's "That Lonesome Song" at 11th on the Top country album's chart and 58th overall.  His total sales now are nearly 375,000 copies sold.  Rascal Flatt's 23 week old "Greatest Hits, Vol 1" saw the group's sales jump over 19% as fans anticipated next week's release of "Unstoppable," the album that is sure to sell over 200,000 copies its first week out while Lady Antebellum also saw a spike of 17% against last week's sales, enough to sell 9,570 more copies of their self-titled debut. George Strait's "Troubadour" sold a surprisingly low 4,500 copies last week but it was still good enough to give King George a 3% sales boost over the week before.  Fans must like the songs because George's current single "River Of Love" is his 57th #1 hit of his career. The most remarkable drop on the charts this week was Eric Chruch's "Carolina" which fell 68 places on the charts and saw sales decrease by 75 percent.