Scotty McCreery's Path To Gold is "Clear as Day"

By: Matt Bjorke

Last Updated: December 5, 2011 10:12 AM

It’s official! Scotty McCreery’s debut album Clear as Day Has Been certified Gold by the RIAA for shipment sales of over 500,000 copies (shipments are to stores). The album, which features Top 20 hit “I Love You This Big” and Top 30 hit “The Trouble With Girls,” is the debut album from the winner of American Idol’s 10^th season (where he beat out fellow teen country singer Lauren Alaina).

“It’s huge!” Scotty says of his first gold album. “Every artist dreams of a gold album and works hard for it, so it’s a major accomplishment to have your debut album go gold. This is just incredible.

“I want to thank the fans,” he says. “This is a testament to how great the fans are.”

Clear As Day debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Top 200 and Top Country Albums charts, making him the youngest man in history to open at the top of the all-genre chart with a debut release. It also garnered the highest first-week sales of any solo country artist this year, behind only Lady Antebellum’s Own The Night.

The album’s first single, “I Love You This Big,” has also been certified as a gold digital single by the RIAA.

Scotty will perform his current hit, ‘The Trouble With Girls,” on the American Country Awards, which airs live on Fox tonight at 8 p.m. ET/7 p.m. CT and he will be joining Brad Paisley’s 2012 tour that begins January 12 in Grand Rapids, Michigan.