Lady Antebellum and Taylor Swift Rule Country Sales Charts this week

It’s another week with roughly the same results as Lady Antebellum continues their march to be one of 2010’s Best-selling albums (the Eminem album and Taylor Swift’s upcoming album are likely to provide competition).  Zac Brown Band, who just scored this week’s #1 for “Free” while simultaneously releasing a new single from their September release You Get What You Give.  Their debut album The Foundation sits at 15 on the Nielsen SoundScan Hot 200 Albums chart.   Following them is the artist with last-week’s #1 single, Jerrod Niemann as his Judge Jerrod and the Hung Jury debut album is this week’s third-best-selling country album.  Miranda Lambert’s Revolution is next and she’s followed by Carrie Underwood’s Play On.  They round out this week’s best selling five country albums on the Hot 200 Albums chart.

Taylor Swift’s Fearless has moved slightly back up the charts while her debut single “Mine” from her upcoming October release Speak Now sold 297,000 digital singles from Wednesday-Sunday.  The song was the 8th-biggest debut sales week for a digital song ever and the fourth-best this year after Eminem’s “Not Afraid,” “Love the Way You Lie” and her own “Today was A Fairy Tale.” All three of those songs sold over 325,000 copies their first week.  Other albums on this week’s Hot 200 Albums chart’s Top-selling country albums include Dierks Bentley’s Up On The Ridge, Jaron and the Long Road to Love’s Getting Dressed In The Dark and Easton Corbin’s eponymous debut Easton Corbin. The final album in this week’s Top 10 country albums on the SoundScan Hot 200 Albums chart is Brad Paisley’s American Saturday Night.  The album’s final single “Anything Like Me” was just released (it will also be the lead single to the upcoming best-of double album.

Luke Bryan starts off the next section of this week’s rundown of best-selling country albums on the Hot 200 Albums chart with Doin’ My Thing sliding down from 84 to 90 on the chart this week while Lady Antebellum’s own debut album from 2008 sits next at 96.  Brooks and Dunn’s final album (while still a duo) #1’s and then Some is next while Pass The Jar from the Zac Brown Band sits at 103.  Rounding out this week’s Top 15 is Jason Aldean, whose Wide Open now has sold over 1.26 million.  Aldean just released his new single from his fall release, the Brantley Gilbert-penned “My Kinda Party.”

In the interesting album section of this week’s chart is Colt Ford’s Chicken & Biscuits.  The record is has sold nearly 90,000 copies as Ford continues to show off his grass-roots appeal.  Craig Morgan’s That’s Why sits next and has almost passed the 50,000 sales mark, thanks largely to the “Collectior’s Edition” version at Cracker Barrel reviving the album’s sales.  Keith Urban continues to ride hit single after hit single for Defying Gravity and the star has now sold nearly 880,000 copies of the record while Josh Turner’s Haywire is nearing 300,000.  George Strait’s Twang, which sold 155,000 copies the first week it was on the charts – has now jumped back into the Hot 200 and sits at nearly 600,000 scanned copies.

After the last couple of weeks of relative stagnation, we’ll start a string of weeks where artists’ albums will debut on the chart with Blake Shelton’s second SixPak All About Tonight leading the way. It will be followed by a string of weeks which feature new albums from Trace Adkins - his first for ShowDog Universal - Marty Stuart and Little Big Town.  Once September hits, we'll see a consistent flow of huge new releases as well as the 4th quarter at retail is looking like a remarkable release time as almost every big star is releasing a new record during this time.