As expected Scotty McCreery and Lauren Alaina ended up #1 and #2 on the BillBoard country charts this week, with the only question being who would be #1 and who would be #2. Once again Scotty ended up in front with another 88,000 in sales (down only 55%) to bring his two week total to an impressive 285,000 units. That is almost twice the combined two week totals of both of last year's winner and runner-up (Lee DeWyze with 53,000 in two weeks and Crystal Bowersox with 96,000 or 149,000 combined.) Lauren sold 69,000 units which also bests both of the first week sales for Lee (39,000) and Crystal (58,000), and with a second single, "Georgia Peaches", being released to radio next week, her sales should continue to improve, especially going into the holiday shopping season.
So in two weeks Mercury Nashville has twice led the Billboard country charts (#1 last week and #1 and #2 this week) selling a total of 354,000 albums from their two American Idol singers. I can definitely see Scotty going gold before the end of the year, and Lauren has a good chance of breaking 200K or 300K by then as well with some good singles and promotion. Let's see if the two of them combined can break 1 million units by the end of 2011.