Lady Antebellum, Alan Jackson Rule Charts This Week

With Easter giving the whole music industry a boost, Lady Antebellum and Alan Jackson paced this week's Hot 200 Albums chart provided by Nielsen SoundScan. Where did Grechen Wilson place? did your favorite artist make the Top 15 country albums?

Thanks to last week’s Easter holiday, many of the albums on the Nielsen SoundScan Hot 200 Albums charts experienced sales increases.  Coupled with new arrivals like the #1 album this week, Usher’s Raymond Vs. Raymond, many albums actually experienced sales gains over last week but fell down a few places on the charts.  Even User’s protégé Justin Bieber experienced a sales growth over his #1 debuting album last week with My World 2.0.  As for the country albums on the chart, Lady Antebellum continues to lead the way with their album dropping from 4-5 on the charts but gaining 11% in sales to get the band’s Need You Now album to nearly 1.75 million copies scanned.  They’re followed by the debut of Alan Jackson’s latest Freight Train, a record which moved nearly 73,000 copies in its first week on the charts, good enough to finish seventh on this week’s chart.  Taylor Swift is the next country album on the tally and after a few weeks of tumbling, she moves back up to the third best-selling (16th overall) on the charts with Fearless. The Zac Brown Band gained sales and sold 25,000 more copies of The Foundation, the same week that “Highway 20 Ride” makes the band the first band to get four #1 hits off of their debut album.  They will be releasing “Free” next, giving them an outside chance at scoring a record-tying 5th #1 hit from an album, something that Rodney Crowell and Carrie Underwood have both done.  Speaking of Miss Underwood, her album, which has Last week’s #1 hit “Temporary Home,” found nearly 20,000 more homes this week as she amps up to release a single that’s likely to be more tempo oriented for the summer time.

 

LW TW Artist Album Sales TW Sales Total
4 5 Lady Antebellum Need You Now 86,616 1,647,332
NEW 7 Alan Jackson Freight Train 72,411 72,441
19 16 Taylor Swift Fearless 32,115 5,751,662
13 19 Zac Brown Band Foundation 25,451 1,781,509
31 27 Carrie Underwood Play On 19,471 1,444,297

Gretchen Wilson bought back “I Got Your Country Right Here” from her old label home to release the album on her own Redneck Records.  While it didn’t debut where her debut Here For The Party or sophomore release All Jacked Up did, she nonetheless did well with nearly 15,000 copies sold as the lead single “Work Hard, Play Harder” continues to ascend the charts, inside the Top 30. She’s followed-up by Blake Shelton’s Hillbilly Bone SixPak album, a record which is selling at a much faster pace than Startin’ Fires did.  Easton Corbin, who recently had a #1 hit with his debut single “A Little More Country Than That” finds his debut album crossing the 100,000 albums sold plateau this week as he gets ready to “Roll With It” with his second single this spring/summer.  Gary Allan’s Get Off On The Pain is the 9th best-selling country album this week, according to Nielsen SoundScan and the title track is already Top 40 after two weeks on the charts, a remarkable achievement for an artist with a spotty radio trackrecord.  Jason Aldean’s Wide Open already has three #1 hits in “She’s Country,” “The Truth” and “Big Green Tractor” and there’s nothing stopping “Crazy Town” from following them to give him four #1 singles. 

 

LW TW Artist Album Sales TW Sales Total
NEW 34 Gretchen Wilson I Got Your Country… 14,753 14,756
24 36 Blake Shelton Hillbilly Bone 14,482 153,103
33 42 Easton Corbin Easton Corbin 12,839 106,863
28 45 Gary Allan Get Off On The Pain 12,378 117,318
53 52 Jason Aldean Wide Open 11,354 1,146,357

The next section of this week’s Top 15 best-selling country albums starts off with Miranda Lambert’s Revolution.  The record sold just over 11,000 copies this week, a mark that Josh Turner’s Haywire also achieved.  Lady Antebellum’s self-titled debut continues to sit in the Top half of the charts while moving another 10,000 copies which pushes the album to 1.6 million sold, a mark that now is eclipsed by Need You Now.  Danny Gokey actually sold about the same amount of albums as last week but slid from 49-61 on the Hot 200 Albums tally but he still sold nearly 10,000 copies to give himself over 120,000 copies of My Best Days sold.  The Crazy Heart Soundtrack rounds out our Top 15 country albums rundown this week as it tumbled from 37 to 72 on Nielsen SoundScan’s Hot 200 Albums tally but is nearing the 170,000 albums sold mark. 

 

LW TW Artist Album Sales TW Sales Total
69 53 Miranda Lambert Revolution 11,269 476,573
45 56 Josh Turner Haywire 11,067 210,345
50 57 Lady Antebellum Lady Antebellum 10,863 1,598,519
49 61 Danny Gokey My Best Days 9,946 120,992
37 72 Crazy Heart Original Sound Track 8,776 166,428

After falling off of last weeks rundown, Darius Rucker returns this week in our interesting albums section with his venerable Learn To Live album continuing to find new homes giving him over 1.375 million albums scanned.  Chris Young’s Man I Want To Be now has two Top 10 hits with “Gettin’ You Home” and the title song and now has moved over 260,000 copies of his sophomore album.  Luke Bryan’s Doin’ My Thing fell off the Top 15 country albums this week but he still sold more than last week with “Rain Is A Good Thing” moving up the charts. Luke’s also up against Gloriana and Joey+Rory for “Best New Artist” at the ACM Awards show. Luke’s label mate Keith Urban moved his album over the 811,000 albums scanned mark while George Strait rounds out this week’s tally with his latest Twang sitting comfortably in the homes of 3000 more fans this week as “Gotta Get To You” climbs the chart.

 

LW TW Artist Album Sales TW Sales Total
87 93 Darius Rucker Learn To Live 7,047 1,376,220
97 95 Chris Young Man I Want To Be 6,723 261,326
83 96 Luke Bryan Doin' My Thing 6,719 288,457
101 117 Keith Urban Defying Gravity 5,427 811,068
192 188 George Strait Twang 3,017 551,166

Where will next week's numbers take the country music industry? Will they continue to see a sales uptick or will it return to status quo?

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