Lady Antebellum Remains On Top of SoundScan Charts

For the first time in their seven week run on the Nielsen SoundScan charts, Lady Antebellum do not have the first or second-best selling album in the country as they sit in the third spot on this week’s Hot 200 Albums chart.  The trio’s Need You Now album moved another 100,000 copies this past week giving the trio nearly 1.4 million copies sold.  Gary Allan’s Get Off On The Pain may not have matched the previous high mark on the SoundScan Hot 200 Albums chart but he does have his fourth consecutive Top 5 chart debut.  The album, which already has a Top 20 hit in “Today,” now features the growing title track as well.  Last week’s #3 album (#2 Country), Blake Shelton’s Hillbilly Bone falls to 10 this week as his album has moved nearly 100,000 albums on the back of the chart-topping title tune.  Danny Gokey’s My Best Days slipped 12 spots to 16 on the charts but his title track single “My Best Days Are Ahead of Me” continues to climb the singles chart where it sits at 29 this week.  The Zac Brown Band’s brilliant single “Highway 20 Ride” has given the band the distinct record of being the first band since Rascal Flatts a decade ago to score four Top 10 hit singles from their debut album and it’s highly possible that all singles will have hit the #1 spot on one of the two major charts.  All of this has helped the band slide back into the Top 5 best selling country albums on the SoundScan Hot 200 chart this week.

Thanks to the Oscar wins for Ryan Bingham, T-Bone Burnett and star Jeff Bridges, the soundtrack to the film Crazy Heart jumped 12 spots on the SoundScan Hot 200 chart to place it as the sixth best-selling country album for the week.  Taylor Swift’s Fearless continues its decent on the chart but the album has still moved nearly 5.7 million copies since its release nearly a year and a half ago.  Easton Corbin’s debut drops 11 spots on this week’s chart as his debut single “A Little More Country Than That” slides right behind Blake Shelton and Trace Adkins’ “Hillbilly Bone” at #2 on the singles chart while his album is pushing the 70,000 copies sold mark.  Carrie Underwood hold’s steady this week as “Temporary Home,” the second single from Play On, sits at #3 on the charts.  She is gearing up to release “Undo It” as her summer single.  The album has now moved nearly 1.4 million copies.  Johnny Cash’s American VI:Ain’t No Grave continues to find homes and is inching ever so close to the 100,000 copies-sold mark, despite not having the exposure (hit singles) that drive the sales of other albums on this chart.

Next we find Josh Turner leading the way with the 16th best-selling country album of the week as Haywire continues to live off the success of “Why Don’t We Just Dance.”  It’s now past the 175,000 copies-sold mark as Turner and his label MCA Records decide which song from the album to release next.  Lady A’s ACM Awards Nominated self-titled debut is the seventeenth best-seller this week while Jason Aldean is the 18th with Wide Open.  Darius Rucker’s Learn To Live,  which has four Top 10 singles like the Zac Brown Band, is nineteenth while Miranda Lambert is causing quite a Revolution with “The House That Built Me” screaming up the charts on the heels of the #1 success of “White Liar.” “House” is now Top 30 after only 3 weeks on the chart, a pace that suggests that ‘Ran has made it into the ‘instant add’ base after years of trying at radio. 

This week’s interesting section of the chart rundown finds Chris Young’s The Man I Want To Be nearing the 250,000 units scanned mark while the title track is a certifiable Top 20 hit right now.   Luke Bryan’s Doin’ My Thing has sold about 25,000 more copies than Chris Young’s album and Luke, who just got the Best New Solo Artist award from the Academy of Country Music yesterday, sits at 24 this week on the Hot Country Songs chart with “Rain Is A Good Thing,” the follow-up to the #1 hit “Do I.”  Josh Thompson is joining the title track brigade at radio as he releases the title tune Way Out Here to radio as the follow-up to his Top 20 debut “Beer On The Table.”  Justin Moore’s running up the charts with his Top 20 hit “Backwoods” inching ever closer to the Top 10 as it now sits at 14 on the charts.  He’s now scanned over 210,000 copies of his self-titled Valory Music Company debut.  Colt Ford’s  nearly two-year old album Ride Through The Country is inching ever so closely to the 150,000 copies-sold mark as he continues to build up the grass roots support to stun the industry in late April when he will garner a Top 50 debut on this very chart with his sophomore album Chicken & Biscuits.

Next week’s country releases are pretty light with Brantley Gilbert’s Halfway To Heaven and Jessica Harp’s A Woman Needs being the most notable releases and those with the outside shot at appearing in next week’s chart recap.