Carrie Underwood Becomes Second Country Star To Sell Six Million Debut Albums

Brody,

Quick distinction you might want to make. Carrie Underwood is only the second female solo country artist to sell 6 million of a debut album. Here’s the full list of artists who have done it:

Garth Brooks (9 million)
Billy Ray Cyrus (9 million)
Brooks & Dunn (6 million)
LeAnn Rimes (6 million)
Dixie Chicks (12 million)
Carrie Underwood (6 million)

Carrie is also only the fourth female country artist to sell 6 million of one studio album at all, following Rimes, Shania Twain and Faith Hill. Shania’s done it three times and Faith has done it twice.

I always find it interesting that “Some Game All” sold 9,000,000 units. People love to rag on Billy Ray and talk about how “terrible” he is…hell “Achey Breaky Heart” is pretty much blacklisted at radio…but that is one of the biggest albums of all time–not to mention that is certainly a lot more “country” (in a traditional sense) than most of what we get these days.

Big does not = good. BRS still blows, even with the new do.

Thanks for bringing that to my attention, Kevin. It would have been more impressive if she was only the second country artist over all to do it, but nonetheless it’s quite a feat.

You need to get your facts straight. Faith hill has only sold at least 6 million of an album one time.
Shania has 3 diamond albums in a row which is at least selling 10 million of 3 straight albums.
Shania’s world record COO album alone sold 38 million worldwide.

Oh, and the “Up!” numbers are inflated because the RIAA counts each unit as two. Off the point, but it always bothered me.

Sally; I disagree with your comments about Carrie, it seems that everywhere I go there’s always someone who gives all of the credit to AI. It’s so obvious that they resent Carrie’s success because she was discovered in an unconventional way. If her success was only because of Idol, then all the other AI winners would have done equally well within their particular music fields, but this is not the case. I give credit to AI for discovering her but her success is from hard work, extraordinary talent and her incredible personality. You can’t take all of her awards and say it’s all because of Idol, and when you speak about the number of records sold you need to understand that she has a lot of crossover fans (people that Country musicians have always ignored before), I’ve read from fan after fan that say they’re not country music fans, me included, but we love Carrie Underwood. I believe her success will continue and her fan base will only increase as she continues to put out hit after hit. As far as singers being manufactured today, no artist has ever made it big without a lot of exposure but exposure alone don’t fill the concert seats or sell the albums, fans do this and Carrie has legitimate fans. Idol didn’t create her fans, she did, Idol only supplied the forum in which she could show off her talent. You show disrespect to her fans when you imply that we were somehow coaxed into liking her because of Idol, especially when so many of us fans never even watch American Idol and please remember that a large number of people who did watch Idol voted for “Bo Bice” and not for Carrie (I learned this after the fact.) What I’m saying is that she gained a lot of us fans the old fashioned way too, radio, word-of-mouth, “late night show” appearances. We didn’t know that we were supposed to already like her because she won Idol; we liked her because she was so talented. If the Country Music Industry had been paying attention, they would have discovered her years ago. Let’s face it, they dropped the ball, and now Carrie’s success has been unfairly deemed tainted (by some) because of Idol. The truth is, she’s just that good and only getting better!

Bill: Keep in mind that when she tried to get sucess without American Idol she got turned down.