Those pesky Grammy Awards were this past weekend and while the real sales numbers from the show won’t be revealed until next week, it’s very likely that this week’s strong sales numbers are due to people wanting to buy stuff that was nominated for such awards. Still, that doesn’t explain why all but two albums in the Top 20 country albums on SoundScan’s Hot 200 albums chart experienced remarkable sales increases.  Case in point: last week, the best selling country album sold less than 30,000 copies which means that this week’s #3 album, Thompson Square’s self-titled debut album would’ve scored the #1 slot but since Jason Aldean and Taylor Swift scored 30% and 21% sales increases, respectively, Thompson Square has to ‘settle’ for a #3 debut, but it’s a debut that’s still three times as many albums sold by fellow newcomer duo the JaneDear girls.  Lady Antebellum, who scored five Grammy awards including Best Country Song, Best Country Album, Record of the Year and Song of the Year awards, gained 60% over last week’s sales numbers.  The Zac Brown Band, which scored their second ever Grammy thanks to the duet with Alan Jackson, “As She’s Walking Away,” rounds out the Top 5 country albums this week with You Get What You Give. 

Rascal Flatts leads off the 6-10 slots on the chart this week with Nothing Like This. The album scored a 17% sales increase while Kenny Chesney’s Hemingway’s Whiskey follows and had a 22% sales increase over last week.  Tim McGraw leaps back into the Top 10 with Number One Hits and sits at #8 this week.  The double disc collection of all his Billboard #1 hits had a 52% sales increase and outsold the #9 country album this week, Miranda Lambert’s Revolution by only 500 copies. Miranda, who won her first Grammy for Best Female Country Vocal Performance for “The House That Built Me” and scored a 69% sales increase.  The Band Perry’s self-titled debut was just certified Gold for 500,000 albums shipped to retail stores and they’re less than 100,000 copies away from having those 500,000 albums into fans hands thanks to a 16% sales increase this week.

Sugarland’s The Incredible Machine has sold nearly 850,000 copies and experienced a 30% sales increase this week while Blake Shelton’s Loaded: The Best of Blake Shelton scored a 56% sales increase.  Country Strong’s original soundtrack is getting another single thanks to Tim McGraw and Gwyneth Paltrow’s duet of “Me And Tennessee” but it was one of the two albums on our chart this week to experience a sales drop. Still, the album has sold nearly 160,000 copies since being released last fall (to little fanfare).  Billy Currington is #14 this week and he scored a 28% sales increase while Steel Magnolia rounds out the Top 15 with their self-titled album having a modest 5% sales increase over last week.

The Zac Brown Band’s second album in this tally, their 2008 debut The Foundation gained a 24% sales increase over last week while Eric Church’s Carolina scored a 41% sales increase as he released “Homeboy” to radio this week, the first single from his upcoming album.  Jerrod Niemann’s Judge Jerrod & the Hung Jury leaps back into the Top 20 with a 44% sales increase.  The album has now sold nearly a quarter of a million records.  The JaneDear girls’ self-titled debut slid from #10 last week to #19 this week but only lost a quarter of the sales they had in their first week, which is less than the average album loses from week one to week two on the charts.  Alan Jackson’s final album for Arista Nashville, 34 Number Ones slides past the 200,000 scanned units mark this week on the strength of a 25% sales increase.  It also guaranteed that 1/4 of the Top 80 albums in the USA are releases from country artists and if you were to add in other artists who are on the fringes (The Civil Wars, Avett Brothers, etc.), that number would be even greater.

One of those fringe artists, the fantastic Amos Lee, leads off our rundown of interesting albums of note as the three week old former #1 album slides down to #56 on the SoundScan Top 200 Albums chart.  Darius Rucker’s Charleston, SC 1966 is next and has sold nearly 400,000 copies while the various artist compilation The Music Inside: A Collaboration Dedicated to Waylon Jennings Volume One from Scatter/Big Machine Records found 6,200 fans picking up the first of three volumes in a year-long tribute to the first Outlaw of Country Music.  Chris Young’s The Man I Want To Be is our next album chronicled here and it had a 55% sales increase over last week.  With a puppet-focused new video for "Brown Chicken Brown Cow," Trace Adkins’ Cowboy’s Back In Town returns to the Top 200 albums in the land this week on the strength of a 83% sales increase.  The baritone vocalist’s Show Dog-Universal debut has now sold over 200,000 copies, which is more than his last Capitol album X (Ten) sold.

Next week we’ll see the debut albums arrive on the chart from Texan Country/Rocker Hayes Carll and the possibility of three debuts from Black River Entertainment’s Sarah Darling, Jeff Bates and Due West. As always, check back here to see where they and the other albums land, and to see how both the Grammy’s and Valentine’s Day purchases (which likely contributed to this week as well) shape up next week’s numbers.