Lady Antebellum Storms The Charts with 'Need You Now'

They may have been like Susan Boyle and Dreamed A Dream, but Lady Antebellum probably weren’t nearly as Fearless as Taylor Swift in predicting the first week sales of their Sophomore album Need You Now.  The album not only met the predicted 400,000 copies-sold marker but they bypassed it by nearly another 81,000 units to end the week at 480,992 copies sold, more than enough to keep the Hope For Haiti digital benefit album (which has a track by Taylor Swift) from repeating as the #1 album.  The second country album on the Nielsen SoundScan charts this week belongs to Taylor Swift who moved another 33,000 copies of her Album of the Year Grammy-winner Fearless.   Lady Antebellum follows them up with their self-titled debut. The album, which features the Grammy and CMA Award-winning “I Run to You,”  experienced a 32% sales bump, thanks largely to folks who were among those 481,000 who didn’t yet purchase either album.  Fresh off their Best New Artist Grammy win, the Zac Brown Band experienced a 27% sales increase this week for their debut album The Foundation.  Rounding out the Top 10 country albums this week is the third album from Carrie Underwood.  Play On sold 2% more than last week and has now sold over 1.263 million albums.  

Jason Aldean leads the second half of the Top 10 selling country albums on the Nielsen SoundScan charts this week as Wide Open moved another 16,000 copies to give Aldean a 9% sales increase over last week.  Patty Griffin debuts on the chart this week with her latest stunning album, Downtown Church.  Darius Rucker saw his album drop in placement on the chart yet it picked up 20% more in sales pushing Learn to Live to nearly 1.3 million copies sold.  Miranda Lambert experienced a sales increase as well as her fantastic Revolution continues to find more homes.  It was up 5% over last week and the album has sold nearly 400,000 copies. Tim McGraw rounds out this week’s Top 10 and like the other hold-over albums, Southern Voice too experienced a sales gain over the previous week.  The album is now nearing 600,000 copies sold.

As with every other week, this week we have an interesting set of five albums that don’t follow the Top 10 on the Nielsen SoundScan charts.  Chris Young’s sophomore album has now found its way in the hearts of over 200,000 fans as the title track continues to run up the charts.  Meanwhile, there are a few greatest hits records worth mentioning as Kenny Chesney’s soon-to-be-updated Greatest Hits II, Brooks & Dunn #1’s…And Then Some and Rascal Flatts’ Greatest Hits, Vol. 1 all experienced nice sales gains this week with the Flatts’ album experiencing the biggest increase.  Rounding out this week’s chart rundown is the self-titled debut album from Justin Moore.  The album sold another 3,000 copies to move the album closer to 190,000 copies sold, as “Backwoods” continues its march up the charts.