It's a bit of ho-hum news for the country music world as everyone expected the nation's most popular live act to score another #1 debut on the Soundscan charts.  With 176,414 units sold, Kenny Chesney's "Lucky Old Sun" knocked Rapper T.I. off of the top spot.  In other country chart debuts, Lucinda Williams scores another hit with her "Little Honey" album.  Placing 9th out of the Top 200 albums sold, the alt-country star moved 34,650 albums. Other notable newcomers last week included Billy Currington's "Little Bit of Everything" landing 13th with over 25,000 sold while Little Big Town and John Michael Montgomery's return to the charts can't be seen as anything but disappointments as they find their newly released "A Place To Land" and "Time Flies" albums landing at 52nd and 172nd on the charts.  Ouch.

Rounding out the Top 5 country albums are Sugarland's "Love On The Inside," which was up a few notches to 18th overall, and the multi-artist compilation "Now That's What I Call Country!" Tim McGraw's "Greatest Hits, Volume 3" took a nose-dive from 9th to 25th on the Top 200 as publicity spread that McGraw wasn't exactly happy that his label chose to release the album.   In other chart news, Darius Rucker continues to sell at a nice pace as his "Learn To Live" placed 28th overall and 6th on the country charts with his total 5 week cume being a respectable 148, 319 units.  Taylor Swift's nearly 3 year old album continues to sell well moving an additional 16,000 units which brings her total to nearly 3.5 million albums sold.  Faith Hill's "Joy to the World" has moved nearly 28,000 albums to date, not too bad for a holiday album.  That was good enough to net her the 2nd spot on the holiday albums chart.

Lady Antebellum may have placed 88th on the char this week but they're up 11 spots as their self-titled debut shifted 6 thousand more copies to give them over 263,000 sold so far this year.  Jamey Johnson moved up the charts as well as "That Lonesome Song" has now sold nearly 100,000 copies, on the basis of "In Color," a song that's slowly moving up the charts.  Heidi Newfield's album is falling on the charts but it has sold a respectable 133,509 copies to date.  As was mentioned above, John Michael Montgomery's latest album sold far fewer than many expected it to, shifting only 3,346 units.

Next week's big releases are Lee Ann Womack and Craig Morgan.  Neither has a real shot at taking the Top spot from Kenny Chesney (who's regular release of "Lucky Old Sun" drops) but they certainly stand a good chance at breaking the top 10 of the Soundscan 200 chart and the top 5 of the Soundscan country charts.  It should also be interesting to see if Chesney can keep #1 or if T.I. or a new release will knock him off it.