Chart News September 21, 2011: Lady Antebellum 'Owns' The Charts

With sales of nearly 350,000 copies, Lady Antebellum easily debuted at #1 on the SoundScan Top 200 Albums Chart this week with their third album Own The Night. They were quickly followed up by the re-entry of Brantley Gilbert’s Halfway To Heaven album. Originally a release for Average Joes Entertainment in 2010, the album was taken by Brantley Gilbert to The Valory Music Company and re-issued with a Deluxe Edition featuring a remixed album and re-recorded version of “Country Must Be Country Wide” along with three other new tracks produced by Dann Huff. New albums from Kristin Chenoweth, George Strait, Reckless Kelly and Steve Holy debuted this week. Check out our notes below to see how they did, before we lay out the chart numbers in our weekly grid.

• Five of the top 16 selling albums in the USA are country albums.
• 1/4 of the Top 80 albums in America are country albums.
• Brantley Gilbert’s 50,822 copies sold for Halfway To Heaven DELUXE bring his sales total to 185,377. It’s pretty apparent that this album will eventually go gold.
• George Strait has now sold 134,311 copies of Here For A Good Time while his debut with the Universal Music Group budget Icon series bows as the 17th best-selling album in country music this week.
• Jason Aldean scored a slight increase of sales this week with My Kinda Party and has now sold over 1.8 million copies of the double platinum certified album as “Tattoos On This Town” runs up the charts, trying to be his fourth consecutive #1 hit (on one or both country radio charts).
• Luke Bryan passes the 300,000 sales mark with Tailgates & Tanlines while labelmate Eric Church has nearly hit 350,000 with Chief. They’re both labelmates of Lady Antebellum as well, giving Capitol/EMI Records Nashville 1/2 of the Top 6 country albums in America.
• The Pistol Annies Hell On Heels was released – in CD form - to stores this week and because of this the album socred a strong sales boost giving the trio nearly 90,000 sold in three total weeks on the charts.
• Pistol Annie member Miranda Lambert’s husband Blake Shelton has now sold over 314,000 copies of Red River Blue as “God Gave Me You” hits the Top 10 this week and looks like a solid future #1 hit from the star crooner.
• Lady Antebellum’s last SoundScan chart-topper, Need You Now gained a lot of momentum this week to bring total sales to nearly 3.66 million copies. The album debuted on the charts in February of 2010 with first week sales of 480,922 copies. So their sales this week for Own The Night, while strong,  showcase that the singles released of this record so far aren’t as strong as “Need You Now” was.
• Kristin Chenoweth debuts with her first country album Some Lessons Learned. It sold nearly 9,000 copies.
• Eli Young Band has sold nearly 80,000 copies of Life At Best.
• Reckless Kelly debuts in the Top 20 with Good Luck & True Love. The country/rockers sold over 6100 albums.
• Scotty McCreery’s soon to be gone EP has now sold 182,633 and we’re only two weeks removed from his full-length debut Clear As Day debuting on the charts (with an outside shot at #1 on the all-genre SoundScan Top 200 Current Albums chart).
• Steve Holy debuted with Love Don’t Run selling 3,849 copies in its first week. The title track itself has sold around 200,000 digital downloads.
• Sunny Sweeney has now sold over 30,000 copies of Concrete in three weeks on the charts. Here’s hoping “Drink Myself Single” makes enough waves to help boost the album’s sales.
• CMA nominees The Civil Wars have now sold nearly 180,000 copies of Barton Hollow without a real radio hit (though “Poison & Wine” has become a big CMT video hit and a hit on AAA Radio).
• Kid Rock rounds out the rundown with his nearly year-old Born Free having scanned over 1,000,450 copies now. That officially makes the southern rock album (which will release “Care” to country radio soon with Pistol Annie Angeelena Presley singing instead of Martina McBride) a platinum release.

Next week, we'll see if Lady Antebellum retains enough sales to stay at #1 or if any other releases can topple them from their perch on the charts. We'll also possibly see new albums from Kyle Park, The Jayhawks and more debut on the charts. As always, check back here to see where they fall. And, No, Granna, we don't know what Keith Urban sold this week as Get Closer fell of the Top 200 Albums Chart this week.