Lady Antebellum Rides Grammy Glow To Regain #1 Country Album

 Lady Antebellum won five out of the six categories they were nominated for at last week’s Grammy Awards and that lead the Capitol Nashville Trio to leap-frog from outside of the Top 15 into the Top 5 on the overall SoundScan Top 200 Albums chart.  The album jumped 205% in sales over last week and that was enough to give the trio a return slot to the #1 country album slot.  Taylor Swift remains the #2 best-selling country album this week with Speak Now, just ahead of the #3 best-selling country album this week, Jason Aldean’s My Kinda Party.   Taylor outsold Aldean by just under 150 copies.  Zac Brown Band’s You Get What You Give earned a bump up this week thanks to their Grammy win and Miranda Lambert’s Revolution makes the second-best jump into the Hot Country Albums chart’s Top 5 this week.  The album – with the Grammy-winning “The House That Built Me” featured on it – has now sold nearly 1.2 million albums. 

Last week’s #3 album slides down to #6 but Thompson Square still looks primed to be one of the best-selling albums from a newcomer in 2011.  The duo’s hit single “Are You Gonna Kiss Me Or Not” looks primed to hit the Top 10 in the next week or two.  Rascal Flatts’ Gold Nothing Like This is next with sales now over 640,000 while The Band Perry’s self-titled Gold-certified debut has now scanned nearly 420,000 copies, making it the best-selling album from a newcomer in 2010.  Kenny Chesney’s Hemingway’s Whiskey – with two #1 hits in “Somewhere With You” and “Boys of Fall” looks to get a third #1 out of “Live A Little,” a song already inside the Top 40 in just two weeks on the charts.  Sugarland’s The Incredible Machine rounds out the Top 10 this week with sales quickly approaching the 900,000 mark (the album is already certified Platinum for one million albums sold to stores).

Tim McGraw’s Gold-selling double album of #1 hits, cleverly titled Number One Hits, is the eleventh best-selling album this week and it’s right ahead of Texas Roadhouse troubadour Hayes Carll’s KMAG YOYO.  With sales over 10,000 it’s a solid debut for the Lost Highway recording artist.  Darius Rucker’s Gold-certified Charleston, SC 1966 rebounded back into the Top 20 this week and has now scanned over 405,000 copies, thanks to a 45% sales increase.  Zac Brown Band’s The Foundation experienced a 22% sales increase despite a drop on the SoundScan Top 200 Chart of two notches – and it’s now sold 2.5 million records.  Blake Shelton rounds out the Top 15 best-selling country recordings this week with his Loaded…The Best of Blake Shelton collection of hits.  This week, the album’s “Who Are You When I’m Not Lookin’” hits #1. 

Keith Urban scored his fourth Grammy Award last week “Best Male Vocal Performace” and returns to the Top 20 this week as Get Closer found over 8,000 more fans to take home the album. With the digital version of the Deluxe Edition now available (the physical version is still a Target-exclusive), the singer of “Put You In A Song” and current hit single “Without You” could be rising even further up the charts.  Billy Currington’s Enjoy Yourself has now passed the quarter-million copies sold mark and the album seems to be on its way to a Gold status before Billy moves on to the next album sometime next year.  Alan Jackson’s 34 Number Ones has now scanned over 207,000 copies and is certain to be certified Gold sometime soon as the double album has to only sell 250,000 copies to be certified as such.  Jerrod Niemann’s Judge Jerrod and the Hung Jury is about to cross the 250,000 sales mark as well.  Rounding out the Top 20 this week is the official soundtrack to Country Strong. It’s now sold nearly 170,000 copies, not bad for a little move with more mega-wattage stars on the soundtrack than in the actual film.

We’d be remiss if we didn’t discuss a couple of the albums found on this week’s interesting albums section. Indie folk stars Mumford & Sons’ Sigh No More scored a plum performance gig on the Grammys and their year-old record sold over 132,000 copies last week and that puts them in line to have the #2 album in America, barely getting beat by Justin Bieber’s Never Say Never (Remixes) EP.  The UK-basted group’s album has now scanned just under 1,000,000 albums, which is a remarkable number given how they’re not exactly mainstream anything.  The same can be said about their Grammy performance cohorts, the Carolina natives The Avett Brothers.  I and Love and You scanned 15,000 copies to give their major label debut over 305,000 copies scanned.   Kid Rock, who is touring with fellow Detroit native and newcomer Ty Stone and country star Jamey Johnson, is another interesting album to discuss as Born Free has sold nearly 800,000 copies without the benefit of a huge radio hit (although the Seger-ish title tune has charted on multiple Billboard single charts).   The two mainstream country albums rounding out our interesting chart numbers this week are Brad Paisley’s nearly Gold double album Hits Alive which has scanned over 209,000 copies and Carrie Underwood’s nearly double platinum Play On.

Next week there aren’t too many new albums that may appear on the charts but we’ll be back with the Top 20 country albums and five other interesting albums (which can be country or ‘country-ish’) worth following.  See y’all then.