MCA Nashville Taylor Swift aside, country albums don’t make it to No. 1 every week. But the genre has still been very strong on the Billboard charts lately: last year, for example, half of the year’s top 10 titles were country.
This week Nashville scored another victory in the singer Gary Allan, who reached No. 1 for the first time with “Set You Free†(MCA Nashville), which sold 106,000 copies in its first week out, according to Nielsen SoundScan. In these days of slipping sales, record companies all but expect most artists’ new albums to sell fewer copies than their last, but, as Billboard noted, Mr. Allan just had the best sales week of his 17-year recording career, and beat the numbers for his last studio release, 2012’s “Get Off on the Pain,†by 63 percent.
Perhaps even more notable is the No. 2 record this week, by the folk-flavored act the Lumineers, which in barely a year has shot from the independent margins to the center of the pop mainstream. The band’s self-titled debut, released by Dualtone last April, sold 50,000 copies last week, a 31 percent gain from the week before, bringing its total sales to nearly 870,000. (A performance on “Saturday Night Live†on Jan. 19 helped, as did discounts last week at Amazon and Best Buy.) Another big boost could come from the Grammys on Feb. 10, where it is scheduled to perform and is nominated for two awards, including best new artist.
Also this week, the soundtrack to the film “Pitch Perfect†(Universal) holds at ! No. 3 with 44,000 sales; a compilation of this year’s Grammy Nominees, released by Capitol and the Grammys’ own label, is No. 4 with 41,000; and another compilation, “Kidz Bop 23†(Razor & Tie) fell three spots to No. 5 with 40,000.
Last week’s No. 1 album, ASAP Rocky’s “Long.Live.ASAP†(Polo Grounds/RCA), fell to No. 7 with 38,000 sales, a 73 percent weekly drop.
