Carrie Underwood's 'Carnival Ride' Soars With Record Breaking No 1 Album Debut

Nashville, TN. (Top40 Charts/ Arista Records) - She's the reigning CMA and ACM Female Vocalist and two-time GRAMMY winner, and Carrie Underwood continues the record-breaking ways of her Sextuple-Platinum debut album, Some Hearts, with the explosive arrival of Carnival Ride, which vaults to No 1 atop Billboard's Top Country Albums and all-genre Billboard 200 charts with mammoth first-week sales of 527,101.

With an incredible 60% increase over Underwood's debut-week sales for Some Hearts (which tallied 314,549), Carnival Ride also earned the highest first-week sales for any female artist in any genre this year.

Setting multiple chart records, Carnival Ride not only earned the best-selling first week of any country sophomore album since the inception of SoundScan, but also notched the largest country debut in digital album chart history, with digital sales of 44,928.

As part of the excitement surrounding the album release, Underwood has recently been featured on Good Morning America, Live with Regis and Kelly, The Early Show, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, the third game of the World Series (singing the National Anthem), and more, with upcoming performances on The Ellen DeGeneres Show (Nov 5), a second Good Morning America (Nov 12), and The Late Show with David Letterman (Nov 13). With additional appearances yet to be announced, Carrie will also perform on The 41st Annual CMA Awards on November 7, where she is a triple nominee, up for Female Vocalist of the Year, as well as Single of the Year and Music Video of the Year (for 'Before He Cheats,' which also earned a Song of the Year nomination for its songwriters).

Carnival Ride's first smash single, 'So Small,' is currently inside the country airplay Top 5 and follows a string of four consecutive No 1 country singles from her first album. Released in November of 2005, Underwood's 19 Recordings/Arista Records/Arista Nashville debut, Some Hearts, became the best-selling, single-disc country album by a solo female in the new millennium and, with sales topping 1.3 million copies this year alone, has so far remained the best-selling country album of 2007.