Country Artists Enjoy Holiday Sales Boost This Week

With no new releases this week in country music, the albums chart placements stayed virtually the same.  Even though these albums from artists like Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood and George Strait stayed at virtually the same places on the charts, nearly all of the albums on this week’s chart rundown experienced substantial sales increases, likely due to the upcoming holiday season. 

The best-selling country albums of the week continue to be Swift and Underwood’s.  The top two selling albums in the country continue to be Youtube sensation Susan Boyle who has now sold a remarkable 1.8 million copies of I Dreamed a Dream in three weeks while Andrea Bocelli’s fantastic holiday album My Christmas retains the second spot and sold 400,000 more copies this week to give the tenor over 1.5 albums sold in 5 weeks.  The second installment of the Glee television show’s series of soundtracks debuted at third, right ahead of Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood.  They make the Nielsen SoundScan Hot 200 Albums chart’s top 5 this week.

Lady Antebellum’s self-titled album continues to move at a remarkable pace as it shifted 55,000 more albums last week.  Tim McGraw’s Southern Voice continues its march to Gold as well as the veteran artist now sits at 418,000 copies sold.  Sugarland’s holiday album Gold and Green was the lone album to see a sales decrease this week but it still managed to nudge the duo close to the 200,000 copies sold mark. 

The Zac Brown Band proves that a solid Foundation is needed to build a lasting career as their debut album continues its march to 1.5 million albums sold and now is less than 200,000 copies away from that goal.  Taylor Swift’s self-titled debut album continues a remarkable sales run and the album is this week’s seventh best-selling album on the Nielsen SoundScan Hot Country Albums chart with the album jumping over the 4.5 million sales mark.  Jason Aldean’s Wide Open continues to march to platinum status (it’s already there as stores have bought more than a million copies to sell to us) in total units scanned.  Darius Rucker is now the proud singer of four Top 10 singles and Learn To Live is sure proving the artist is prophetic as he is truly “History In The Making.”  

Miranda Lambert’s Revolution sits at 12th on this week’s Hot Country Albums chart (55th overall) and should pass the 300,000 units-sold mark before the holiday sales season is over.  Rascal Flatts’ Unstoppable jumped 43 spots on the Hot 200 Albums chart this week as the trio’s latest album became stocking stuffers for many folks while Reba and Toby Keith round out the Top 15 with their latest albums Keep on Loving You and American Ride, respectively.  

Love On The Inside  from Sugarland leads the final five albums in this week’s Hot Country Albums Top 20 chart rundown and the album is inching ever so closely to the two million units scanned mark.  Keith Urban’s Defying Gravity and George Strait’s Twang are next while Brad Paisley has a Flatts-like jump back into the Hot 200 albums chart’s Top 100 albums and sits at 87 there (19th place on the country tally).  He’s followed by Luke Bryan, who’s Doin My Thing is this week’s twentieth best selling country album.

In this week’s interesting albums tally we find the venerable Jamey Johnson with That Lonesome Song, Brooks & Dunn with #1’s…And then Some, Chris Young with Man I Want To Be, Billy Currington with Little Bit of Everything and, finally Kellie Pickler, who received a 50% sales increase to move her self-titled sophomore album over the 350,000 copies sold mark.   

Next week brings Phil Vassar’s Traveling Circus onto the charts and while the album isn’t likely to crack the country Top 10, it should find its way inside the Top 20 or 40 country albums chart rundown. Check back next week to see how it and these other albums did.  Happy Holidays.