NEW YORK, NY. (Top40 Charts/ RCA
Music Group) - Artists of the RCA
Music Group dominate the chart this week with three of the country's Top Ten best-selling albums.
Avril Lavigne leads the way with the Number One debut of her new RCA album The Best Damn Thing, which scored first-week sales of 286,000 units. The successor to Under My Skin - the Canadian pop-punk star's Number One album of 2004 - The Best Damn Thing was propelled into the top spot by two smash hit singles: the near-Platinum rock track "Girlfriend" and the Gold-certified ballad "Keep Holding On." This week "Girlfriend" jumps to No 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts, giving Avril the No 1 single and album in the country. The Best Damn Thing has sold more than 1.4 copies million internationally and entered at Number One in eleven countries outside the U.S. including the United Kingdom, Japan, Canada, and Germany. Seven-time Juno Award winner Avril Lavigne has sold more than 24 million albums worldwide since the 2002 release of Let Go, her 6X platinum RCA debut.
Daughtry already went to Number One on the Top 200 with the RCA/19 Recordings debut Daughtry. After 22 weeks on the chart, the 2X Platinum disc is at No. 7 with sales of an additional 52,000 units. Daughtry's hot streak continues thanks to "It's Not Over," a multi-format hit single and the "It's Not Over" video, which debuted at Number One on VH1's viewer-voted VSPOT Top 20 Countdown. Also, his second single "Home" is racing up the charts and is featured as the exit song on the current season of American Idol. Daughtry continues a headlining U.S. tour that runs through May, with additional dates to be announced.
Carrie Underwood's Some Hearts is simply unstoppable: In its 75th week on the chart, the Arista/19 Recordings album rose from No. 14 to No. 9 with another 45,000 units sold. Originally released on November 15, 2005, Some Hearts was certified 5X Platinum in January 2007 to become the best-selling single-disc album of the past six years by any solo country artist. Winner of this year's Grammy for Best New Artist, Carrie appeared March 24 on "Saturday Night Live" to sing two of her four Number One Country songs from Some Hearts - "Before He Cheats," now a Top 10 Hot AC and Top 15 at Top 40 radio track, and her latest Country No 1 hit, "Wasted." This marks the first time a solo country female has hit the Hot AC Top 10 since Faith Hill's "The Way You Love Me" in December of 2000! In the Academy of Country Music Awards airing May 15 on the CBS network, Carrie Underwood is nominated in five categories including Female Vocalist, Album of the Year (Some Hearts), and Song of the Year ("Before He Cheats").
