Steel Magnolia Debuts in Country Album Top 5 This Week

The second half of the Top 10 country albums on the SoundScan Hot 200 Albums chart is lead by Lady Antebellum's Need You Now which has now sold well over 3.1 million copies.  Kenny Chesney's Hemingway's Whiskey - which features a pair of #1 hits in "Somewhere With You" and "The Boys of Fall" - has now sold nearly 650,000 copies.  Zac Brown Band's You Get What You Give already features the #1 hit "As She's Walking Away" and it looks as if "Colder Weather" is heading the same way.  The album has now sold over 620,000 copies.  Rascal Flatts give their label Big Machine Records three albums in the country Top 10 with Nothing Like This sitting at #9.  They've now sold over 570,000 copies of the record which features #1 "Why Wait" and "I Won't Let Go."  Tim McGraw, who had a 3 week #1 with "Felt Good On My Lips," sits at #10 this week with "Number One Hits."  It has now sold over 210,000 copies since a late November 2010 release. 

The Band Perry's self-titled debut featuring "You Lie," "Hip To My Heart" and platinum-selling #1 hit "If I Die Young" is the 11th best-selling country album on the SoundScan Hot 200 Albums Chart this week.  It has now sold over 350,000 copies since being released last fall.  Sugarland passes the 800,000 copies-scanned mark with their fourth studio release (sixth overall) The Incredible Machine.   The album features "Little Miss" and #1 hit "Stuck Like Glue." Darius Rucker has the #13 album this week with Charleston, SC 1966.  The record has sold over 370,000 copies with hopes of current hit single "This" following "Come Back Song" to the top of the chart.  Miranda Lambert has the #14 country album this week with Revolution sitting right above her fiancée Blake Shelton who is at #15 with Loaded: The Best of Blake Shelton.

Alan Jackson's 34 Number Ones is the 16th best-selling country album on the SoundScan Hot 200 Albums chart this week.  The two-disc album (which is close to gold for 250,000 copies shipped to stores) has now scanned over 175,000 copies.  It features a 35th number one hit with "As She's Walking Away" present on the collection along with an interesting version of "Ring of Fire."  The Zac Brown Band's Foundation is #17 this week and the album has sold nearly 2.5 million copies since being released in 2008.  Keith Urban passes the Gold mark this week as his album has now scanned over 500,000 copies since being released this past fall.  Get Closer features lead single "Put You In A Song," a song that still has a chance of hitting the top spot on the charts.  Billy Currington's Enjoy Yourself - which features #1 hit "Pretty Good At Drinkin' Beer" and "Let Me Down Easy" is comfortably over the 215,000 sales mark while Taylor Swift rounds out this week's Top 20 with the 6.2 million seller Fearless.   

The interesting albums section is kicked off by Toby Keith with Bullets in the Gun. While the lead single "Trailerhood" was 'only' a Top 20 hit, the album's title track has helped the album move nearly 275,000 copies since being released last fall.  Brad Paisley's Hits Alive joins un-featured albums from Eric Church and Jerrod Niemann (Judge Jerrod & The Hung Jury) giving country music 24% of the Top 100 albums on the SoundScan Hot 200 albums this week.  Carrie Underwood, whose Play On is featured in this section this week has the leading album of the second-half of the Hot 200 albums this week.   The Grascals Cracker Barrel Old Country Store-exclusive Grascals and Friends: Country Classics with a Blugreass Spin sold over 4,000 copies making it the best-selling Bluegrass album of the week.  Reba's All The Woman I Am - which has a #1 hit in "Turn On The Radio" and a potential future big hit in new single "If I Were A Boy," rounds out our rundown this week with over 221,000 fans picking up the record since being released last fall.

Next week's chart will be vaguely similar to this week's with some albums dropping and some rising as the quiet start to 2011 continues.  While nothing new of any consequence was released this week, that doesn't mean that there won't be some interesting things to discuss in these pages next week so until then, have a good week!