Blake Shelton Scores Best-Selling Country Album This Week

Yep, it is Wednesday again and with this news comes the latest round of Nielsen SoundScan Hot 200 Albums chart numbers.  After a couple of ‘slow’ weeks for country music, a new album displaces Lady Antebellum from the top spot for only the second time since Need You Now was released the beginning of this year.  The album was displaced by Blake Shelton’s second ‘six pak’ for Warner Brothers Records, the six song album All About Tonight may have sold less in its first week than Hillbilly Bone but it did displace Lady Antebellum, giving Blake his first chart-topping album.  The title track of the EP is also his first ever consecutive number one single, thus ensuring that 2010 is – according to Blake Shelton – “The best year of my life.”  Lady Antebellum’s album officially passed the 2.5 million scanned mark as “Our Kind of Love” makes its way up the Top 10.  The Zac Brown Band are releasing a new album in September yet while last week’s #1 “Free” is on The Foundation, the band already is charting the lead-off track from You Get What You Give with “As She Walks Away” debuting at 32 this week.  Miranda Lambert’s “Only Prettier” is rising up the charts while her album retains its place as the 4th best-selling  country recording  this week (22nd overall) on the Hot 200 Albums chart while Jerrod Niemann slides down to the fifth position.  If he retains a similar sales number this week that he had last week, he will slide past the 100,000 units scanned mark, just as he releases the second single from the album, “What Do You Want From Me.” 

Taylor Swift’s “Mine” is continuing to sell some remarkable digital singles (it’s near gold already), but  that hasn’t stopped her previous album Fearless from inching ever so close to the 6,000,000 albums scanned mark.  She retains the sixth-best-selling album on the Nielsen SoundScan Hot 200 Albums chart this week.  Right on Taylor’s heels is the former Top 5-seller, Carrie Underwood with Play On finding nearly 8,500 more homes.  Dierks Bentley’s “Draw Me A Map” is his next single from the rootsy Up On The Ridge and that may help get the record near or over the 200,000 units-sold mark.  Eason Corbin’s self-titled record retains this week’s ninth-best-selling  country album slot on the Hot 200 Albums chart as “Roll With It” enters the Top 11 on the singles chart.  Luke Bryan’s Doin’ My Thing leapfrogs Brad Paisley to get back inside the Top 10 best-selling country albums this week.  The record has now sold over 410,000 copies since being released late last year.   

Brad Paisley’s American Saturday Night leads the next set in this week’s Top 15 country albums on the Nielsen SoundScan Hot 200 Albums chart.  The album is now comfortably over the 600,000 sales mark as Brad Pasiley and his label focus on releasing a special-edition live/best of set this November.  Lady Antebellum’s self-titled debut continues to sell well and is nearing the 1.75 million copies-sold mark while Jaron and the Long Road for Love’s Getting Dressed in the Dark continues its march towards 100,000 copies sold.  Zac Brown Band’s live set  Zac Brown Band and Friends Live…Pass The Jar sits next and it’s this week’s 100th-best-seller on the chart.  Right behind it is Brooks & Dunn’s #1’s…And Then Some two-disc best-of set. 

Leading off the ‘interesting’ section of this week’s rundown of the best –selling albums on the Nielsen SoundScan Hot 200 Albums chart is Colt Ford’s Chicken & Biscuits album.  It has sold more than 93,000 copies since being released in April.  Josh Turner’s Haywire is inching ever so closely to the 300,000 albums scanned mark while Craig Morgan’s finally sold more than 50,000 copies of That’s Why, thanks in large part to his partnership with Cracker Barrel Old Country Stores.  Rodney Atkins will be releasing a Cracker Barrel release in September.  Blake Shelton’s Hillbilly Bone re-enters the chart this week at 170, thanks in large part to the release of All About Tonight. Hillbilly Bone has now sold nearly 233,000 copies.  Rosanne Cash released her memoir Composed last week and thanks to the high profile of that book, she sees her 2009 release The List – a collection of classic country songs her father selected – re-enter the chart.  The album now has sold over 200,000 copies, an impressive feat these days when you consider Rosanne hasn’t scored any hits in years. 

Next week we’ll see the arrival of Trace Adkins’ Cowboy’s Back In Town, a record that is the first release in his new label partnership with Show Dog-Universal.  Australian hitmaker The McClymont’s album debuts this week as well.  Look for their placements in this very same space next week!