Country Album Sales: Week of Feb 01-07

Lady Antebellum rode the wave of momentum with a gargantuan hit single in “Need You Now” and their fast-rising follow-up single “American Honey” to huge sales numbers for their sophomore album Need You Now and its first week on the charts.  In their second week, the trio moved their album past gold and are well on their way to a second Platinum album as the record retained nearly 50% of week one’s sales to scan another 208,000 copies.  They now sit at 689,000 copies of Need You Now sold in just two weeks at retail.  The Grammy’s helped all music sales this week but with Country music artists taking home some of the biggest awards of the night, including Taylor Swift bringin’ home Album of The Year for Fearless, Taylor jumped back up the NielsenSoundScan Hot 200 Albums Chart in a big way with over a 58% sales gain for the week, proving that folks wanted to know what made Fearless the album of the year, even as the singer had a weak performance with Stevie Nicks on the telecast.

 Zac Brown Band took home the Best New Artist trophy. The group jumped into the Top 10 on the overall chart and leapfrogged Lady A’s self-titled debut to be the third-best selling country album of the week, giving Country music 30% of the Top 10 albums this week.  Not too shabby.  Carrie Underwood also leapfrogged the Lady A debut as her performance on the show reminded folks that the country star did indeed have a good, clean newer record to purchase.  As such, Play On found 29,000 more homes to, well, play on.  Lady A’s record rounds out the Top 5 this week.

Jason Aldean leads the second half of the Nielsen SoundScan Hot Country Albums this week as his Wide Open continues to find more homes.  The album has now sold over 1,030,000 copies, thanks to three consecutive multi-week #1 hits.  The Crazy Heart Soundtrack follows Aldean next, giving Golden Globe-winner Ryan Bingham some well-deserved exposure (which should gain even more when he likely wins the Oscar for “The Weary Kind”).  Darius Rucker is next with his Learn To Live.  While Josh Turner leapt past him on the singles chart to score Billboard’s #1 single this week for “Why Don’t We Just Dance,” “History In The Making” still stands a strong chance at giving Darius 4 #1 singles from the album.  Miranda Lambert continues to be a Revolution to fans as her recent Country Aircheck/Mediabase #1 “White Liar” (her first #1 single anywhere), starts to slow down on the charts.  It’ll be interesting to see if this single keeps Miranda a radio star or if the lukewarm response to her at radio will return with the next single.    Tim McGraw is already coming back to radio with “Still,” the follow-up to the smash #1 hit title track for this week’s 10th best-seller, Southern Voice.

Keith Urban kicks off this week’s ‘interesting albums’ section on our rundown of The top album sales from Nielsen SoundScan this week.  Checking in at 67 on the Hot 200 Albums chart is Urban’s Defying Gravity. It seems as if radio is not quite as hot on “Til Summer Comes Around,” in our minds the albums best single yet, as they were for “Kiss A Girl” or “Sweet Thing.”  Still, fans seem to like the album as over 8600 more people added it to their collection.  Country’s wunderkind Chris Young is scoring with his Man I Want To Be single and album as they make RCA Records smart for turning the talented winner of Nashville Star 20006 into an actual star.  Luke Bryan used a little of the Lady Antebellum pixie-dust to score a #1 hit with their co-written “Do I?” and now he’s just Doin’ [His]Thing as he rises up the singles chart with the charming and cute “Rain is a Good Thing.” Reba’s Keep On Loving You is continuing its march towards Gold as the legendary star starts working the title track to radio, following-up her first #1 hit in seven years, “Consider Me Gone.”   Bluegrass stalwarts Dailey & Vincent have crafted one of our early favorites for Best Album of 2010 with Dailey & Vincent Sing The Statler Brothers.  The album moved nearly 5400 copies  as fans of home-style cooking shopped for the Cracker Barrel exclusive album last week.  It debuted on the Hot 200 Albums chart at 110 and it concludes this week’s round-up of albums. 

Next week will see the launch of Josh Turner’s fourth album Haywire. Will it find a home in the Top 5 country albums? Can it dethrone Lady A’s behemoth of an album to claim the top spot? Check back next week to find out!