Kip Moore scores his second and quickest top 10 on the Nielsen BDS-driven Country Airplay chart, as the artist’s third single, “Beer Money,” steps 11-10 in its 18th chart week.
Moore’s first to reach the upper tier was “Somethin’ ‘Bout a Truck,” which entered the top 10 in is 29th week on the May 5 chart, eventually spending the first two weeks in June at No. 1.
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The lead single from Moore’s rookie album “Up All Night” was “Mary Was the Marrying Kind,” which peaked at No. 45 during a 19-week chart run last year. Since its May 12 debut at No. 3 on Country Albums, the set has sold 213,000 copies according to Nielsen SoundScan, and ranks at No. 16 this week. Meanwhile, “Beer” sells 23,000 downloads — its best one-week sum — in its sixth week on Country Digital Songs, where it ranks at No. 14. On Hot Country Songs, (which incorporates airplay, download sales and streaming data), “Beer” bounces 15-13.
Jason Aldean‘s “Night Train” makes a splashy debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and on Country Albums, opening with 409,000 copies sold, according to SoundScan. The artist’s fifth full-length album is his first leader on the big chart (his third on the country list), marking the second-best start this year behind Mumford & Sons, who tallied 600,000 with “Babel” on the chart dated October 13.
Jason Aldean’s ‘Night Train’ Rolls to No. 1 On Billboard 200
With approximately 48% of Aldean’s first-week sum purchased digitally, “Train” also sets a career-best SoundScan week for the Georgia native, whose previous best was 193,000 with “My Kinda Party” two years ago. Led by the new album’s title track at No. 26 (43,000 downloads), “Train” spawns seven debuts on Hot Country Songs due to digital download activity surrounding the set’s release, including “The Only Way I Know” (with Luke Bryan & Eric Church) at No. 28 (31,000 sold), which also posts the Hot Shot Debut at No. 47 on Country Airplay.
Elsewhere in the upper tier on Country Albums, Scotty McCreery‘s “Christmas with Scotty McCreery” arrives at No. 2 with 41,000 sold, bringing the Billboard 200 its first top 10 seasonal fare of the year at No. 4. Also noteworthy since it has no apparent terrestrial radio momentum or television fan base, Jamey Johnson‘s affectionate, multi-artist fete for first-generation Nashville songwriting pioneer Hank Cochran titled “Living for a Song: A Tribute to Hank Cochran” opens at No. 3 with 33,000 sold. Select songs from the set have been prominently featured for the past two weeks on SiriusXM’s Willie Nelson-branded classic country channel, “Willie’s Roadhouse.”
Billboard’s senior retail analysts and industry sources expect with consensus that Taylor Swift‘s “Red” will open with more than a million units on next week’s album charts, making the 22 year-old the first woman in the Nielsen SoundScan era (since 1991) to do so. Indications are that “Red” will mostly likely race past the first-week sum of Swift’s previous set “Speak Now” (1.047 million in 2010). With two days of sales under its belt through Wednesday (the title was released on Monday, Oct. 22, bypassing the normal Tuesday-release cycle), “Red” has reportedly shifted over 600,000 units. By the time the sales week is complete (Nielsen SoundScan tallies totals through Sunday, October 28) “Red” will most likely have set single-week sales records at digital retailer iTunes Music Store and mass-merchant Target. The former retailer holds the first-week digital exclusive for the title, while the latter has created pop-up Swift stores in its locations and is the sole source for the deluxe edition of “Red” which contains three bonus track and three additional remixes.
Swift leads Country Songs for a third straight week with “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” which collects Greatest Gainer stripes for a second straight week as the chart’s biggest overall streaming surge. That track ranks at No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100, where she also ranks with decidedly pop-styled fare from the album, including Hot Shot Debut applause at No. 13 with “State of Grace” and “I Knew You Were Trouble” at No. 23. Based on style and airplay marketing thrust, those and several other tracks from “Red” will not appear upon initial release on Country Songs and Country Digital Songs.