November 01, 2007

Carrie Underwood Has An Easy Ride To First Billboard No. 1

By Chris Harris (MTV.com)

Everyone's an underdog when pitted against the sales might of someone like Carrie Underwood, who stole the American Idol title during the Fox series' fourth season.

After all, the bubbly blonde's debut album, 2005's Some Hearts, has been certified six-times platinum by the RIAA and remains the fastest-selling debut country album in the history of SoundScan. Not only that, but it's one of the best-selling LPs of the last two years. Some Hearts, which eventually yielded five No. 1 singles, debuted at No. 2 on Billboard's top 200 with 314,600 copies sold and has sold close to 6 million copies in the U.S. alone. It hasn't fallen out of the top 200 once since its initial release.

So let's face it - no one in the music business awoke this morning and was shocked to learn that Underwood's sophomore LP, Carnival Ride, opens at No.1 on next week's albums sales chart with an impressive 527,000 in week-one scans.

Carnival Ride becomes the artist's first chart-topping bow, and she walked away with the win. Raising Sand, a collaborative offering from Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant and bluegrass pioneer Alison Krauss, came closest to Underwood, opening at No. 2 with 112,300 sold, according to the latest SoundScan totals. That's a margin of nearly 415,000 albums separating No. 1 from No. 2.

Carnival Ride is now one of the best-selling debuts of 2007, following Linkin Park's Minutes to Midnight (with 623,000 scans), 50 Cent's Curtis (691,000) and Kanye West's Graduation (957,000).