Country Album Chart News - The Week of June 5 2013: Blake Shelton is #1, Florida Georgia Line, George Strait

iTunes sale, "The Voice" and "Healing In The Hearland” help Blake Shelton rise from #4 to #1 on this week’s chart. Darius Rucker #2. John Fogerty’s genre-crossing new duets album Wrote A Song For Everyone debuts high.

Without any new albums of note outside of the genre-bending duets album from John Fogerty’s Wrote A Song For Everyone, (which sold 51,000 copies and features guests like Keith Urban), Blake Shelton had the easiest path to #1 with album sales of 42,000 last week, a gain of 69% and no doubt ‘bolstered’ by the NBC Benefit Concert “Healing In The Heartland” (Which generated over $6.5 million in relief funds with an additonal $1m added by Starbucks) The singer’s latest album Based On A True Story... has now sold 588,000 copies in 10 weeks on the chart and gained 11 slots on the Top 200 Albums Sales chart (it also benefitted from an iTunes "The Voice"-centric sale). Last week’s #1 Country Top 10 Albums Chart leader, Darius Rucker’s True Believers slides down one slot this week to #2. The rest of the Top 5 are unchanged from last week with George Strait, Lady Antebellum and Florida Georgia Line rounding out the chart with their latest albums.

With no big new albums, Roughstock’s Top 10 Country Albums Chart Stays The Same Except for the return of Luke Bryan’s “Spring Break” album,

Kenny Chesney’s Life On A Rock continues to sell with sales over 261,000 while Pistol Annies Annie Up is now at 143,000 sold despite no big radio or digital download hits (yet).Taylor Swift’s RED has now moved 3.7 Million copies while The Band Perry have this week’s #8 album with Pioneer now at 330,000 sold. Luke Bryan’s Spring Break...Here To Party jumps into the fray with sales at 424,000 (his last album tailgtes & tanlines was the #13 best-seller this week with sales now over Double Platinum (2.02 Million). Finally, coming in at #10 this week is Tim McGraw with Two Lanes Of Freedom. The album has sold 345,000 copies in 17 weeks while his singles have all sold over 500,000 or 1,000,000 singles.

Top 10 country Albums take ¼ of the SoundScan Top 200 Albums chart placements. Brad Paisley’s Wheelhouse moves over 200,000 copies sold.

This week we find Brad Paisley’s Wheelhouse leading our notable albums section and the album which features “Southern Comfort Zone” and “Beat This Summer” has now sold 200,000 copies in two months on the charts. In three weeks Trace Adkins has moved 45,000 copies of Love Will his third album for Show Dog-Universal. Blake Shelton’s first Greatest Hits album, Loaded: The Best of Blake Shelton gains on the chart with sales now exceeding 729,000, not bad for a collection which featured not a single new track when it was released. Gary Allan’s 19-week-old album Set You Free has now sold 289,000 copies and if the hits like “Pieces” continue, he’ll continue to find himself inching closer to another Gold-selling album and Gold/Platinum singles from said album. Finally, Pistol Annies debut Hell On Heels (which started out as a digital-only album and became the rare release eventually stocked by brick and mortar stores) has been Certifed Gold by the RIAA with scanned sales nearly at the 500,000 mark (12,000 copies away).

This coming week, June 4, is another light sales week so look for the top-end of the charts will be virtually unchanged.

Top 10 Country Albums for The Week of June 5, 2013 with five Notable Albums (SoundScan Top 200 Current Albums Chart Placement)*

*Numbers rounded to nearest thousandth.