Blake Shelton is Back at No.1 with ‘Sunshine’

08 Oct, 2014

Country king Blake Shelton earns his second No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart as his new release, Bringing Back the Sunshine, debuts atop the list. It was released on Warner Bros. Nashville Records on Sept. 30, and sold 101,000 copies in the week ending Oct. 5, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

He previously tallied a No. 1 with 2011’s Red River Blue, which opened with 116,000. His best sales week ever came in 2013, when his last album, Based On a True Story, bowed at No. 3 with 199,000.

His new album’s current single, “Neon Light,” rises 8-7 on the Country Airplay chart — a new peak. It gained 10 percent in radio audience for the week, according to Nielsen BDS. It’s his 21st top 10 on that list.

Bringing Back the Sunshine is only the third country album to hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in 2014, following Eric Church’s The Outsiders (on the chart dated March 1) and Shelton’s wife, Miranda Lambert, with her Platinum set (June 21).

Watch our interview with Miranda Lambert here

Shelton also brings “sunshine” to the top of the chart for the first time. It’s the first occasion the word has been used in the title of a No. 1 album. The previous highest-ranked “sunshine” album was Natasha Bedingfield’s No. 3-peaking Pocketful of Sunshine in 2008.

Another country act, Lady Antebellum, arrives in the No. 2 slot on the Billboard 200 with their fifth studio release, 747. It sold 74,000 copies in its first week, which is less than half of what their last album, 2013’s Golden, bowed with: 167,000. 747is the group’s sixth top 10 album.

With Shelton and Lady Antebellum at Nos. 1 and 2, this is the first time the top two albums are country efforts in nearly four years. Country music last controlled the top two rungs on the Nov. 20, 2010-dated chart, when Taylor Swift’s Speak Nowand Jason Aldean’s My Kinda Party were Nos. 1 and 2, respectively.

Billboard

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