Reba Leads Country Albums on SoundScan Charts

After a few weeks topping the Nielsen SoundScan Hot 200 Albums charts, country music’s cavalcade of stars fell-off the Top spot (Colbie Calliat took the mantle from Reba) but four of the Top 10 albums this week were country records (5 of the Top 11). Reba continued to pace the Top country albums this week with her “Keep On Loving You” moving more than 41,000 more copies, a number that was similar to George Strait’s “Twang,” which has now sold over 250,000 copies in just three weeks on the charts.  Taylor Swift continues to be fearlessly in the Top 10 of the charts with her “Fearless” landing 3^rd place on the charts this week.  Rounding out the Top 5 country albums this week (and also the Hot 200 Albums Top 10) is the compilation album “Now That’s What I Call Country 2.”  It moved over 33,000 copies this week. The Hannaha Montana Movie Soundtrack placed 5th this week.

Right behind the Hannah Montana Movie Soundtrack, is this week’s 6^th best-selling country album, Zac Brown Band’s debut album The Foundation.  Released via Homegrown/Roar/Atlantic, the record has now moved over 850,000 units scanned and it is officially a Platinum album.  Cracker Barrel will be releasing a special-edition with bonus tracks next week and that will only help ZBB get to scanned Platinum status even more quickly.  Jason Aldean’s “Wide Open” album remains a steady seller as well with an additional 20,000 units scanned bring his total cume over 550,000 copies sold.  He has an outside shot of selling a million copies before the year is over. 

Darius Rucker’s Platinum-selling “Learn To Live” features three #1 hits and is likely on its way to featuring a 4^th as “History In The Making” has a great start at radio.  The record comes in 8^th this week on the Hot Country Albums chart (30^th on the Hot 200 Albums) while Sugarland’s “Live On The Inside” slides down to 9^th in its third week on the charts.  The Walmart exclusive set has now moved nearly 140,000 copes. Rounding out the Top 10 on the Hot Country Albums chart this week is Carolwood Records’ new trio Love and Theft with their debut album “World Wide Open.”  It sold over 12,500 copies to give the group the third best-selling debut album of the year. 

In the interesting section of the chart, we find chart debuts for the latest releases from Willie Nelson and Jack Ingram.  Willie’s album may be full of “American Classics” but it didn’t move nearly as many units as one would expect a legendary performer to get but it still is his best-selling album of this year (his 4^th release) with over 11,000 copies sold.  Ingram may be full of Big Dreams & High Hopes but fans might not be ready to follow him as his album, despite the Guinness Book stunting for most interviews in a 24-hour period, moved only 9,000 units.  It’s even more surprising given how popular his single “Barefoot & Crazy” is. 

Eric Church’s “Carolina” is still selling at a nice pace, even as his single starts to slow on the charts.  The set has now moved over 125,000 copes.  With “Red Light” doing well on the radio, David Nail’s two-week-old set “I’m About To Come Alive” continues to move a few units and has now sold, nearly 10,000 copies in its two weeks, which is a little surprising given the major label promotional support the album receives.  Indie artist Colt Ford (profiled here) rounds out our chart run-down this week with his remarkably successful album “Ride Through The Country” now nearing the 70,000 albums sold mark. 

Next week RCA’s Chris Young, Verve’s John Fogerty and singer/songwriter lead the new country releases.  Neither are expected to chart very high but due to the CMA Music Fest’s 3-hour concert special on ABC look for many country albums to gain sales increases, particularly those of acts featured on the special.