Official Christmas Sales Numbers are Merry for All Idols!
My Prediction for Scotty "Mr. Consistency" McCreery's Christmas Week Sales
Just for added fun I took the three weeks where he sold between 43K and 88K and added them all together. They are 57K + 52K + 67K which adds up to 176K. Now let's add up the two weeks when he sold 88K and they add up to... 176K.
Now let's add up the 5 weeks he sold under 50K: 42K+40K+43K+33+42K = 200K. That is pretty darn close to his debut week sales of 197K.
Let's summarize his current sales after 11 weeks:
1) Top week = 197K
2) Next top 2 weeks = 88K + 88K = 176K
3) Next top 3 weeks = 67K + 57K + 52K = 176K
4) Bottom 5 weeks of sales = 43K + 42K + 42K + 40K + 33K = 200K
Total sales ~ 749K
Scary, isn't it?
Merry Christmas, Idols, Good Sales for Everybody!
Final 'Clear As Day' Predictions Top Last Week's Estimates Again
Latest "Clear As Day" Numbers, Good Ones As Usual!
I noticed some interesting facts from this graph. I find it interesting that for 4 of the weeks his sales were almost exactly the same, between 40K to 43K. And then if you take his low (week 7) at 33K along with the next highest (last week, week 10) at 52K, if you average those two weeks they again have an average of 42K. His sales have been incredibly consistent. So for his 6 lowest weeks in sales his average sales has been about 42K units which is an impressive number. In reality debut sales of 42K would not too bad for a new artist these days, but that has been the average sales for "Clear As Day" every week starting a month after its release. Week 8 was the one large anomaly and weeks 10, 11 and 12 should show increases leading up to Christmas. I will also be curious to see his sales slowdown once January hits and if a new single will be released then, especially once the new season of American Idol begins (where he will definitely perform).
Another fact to notice is that his 2nd best and 3rd best sales weeks were 6 weeks apart... but the sales amount was almost exactly the same at 88K in sales, a figure almost exactly twice his average for his bottom 6 weeks of sales. Is there an alien force at work here buying Scotty's albums? What is the special meaning of 42K or 88K in weekly sales?
Make that 6 out of 10 Weeks, #1 Country for "Clear As Day"
It is official now that Scotty McCreery's "Clear As Day" is again the #1 selling country album in the USA, outselling Lady Antebellum's "Own the Night". The album sold 52K more units to reach a total of 681K, ending up #13 on the overall chart to "Own The Night"'s #15 ranking. If you look over Scotty's incredible 10 week run, the worst week he had was sales of 34K (his only week under 40K), and that was before the big week when he sold almost 90K. He should have two more solid holiday weeks of sales before overall sales start slowing down.
Lauren Alaina also saw her sales of "Wildflower" increase slightly, and with an additional 10K in sales her 9 week total is up to 183K. Unlike last week, her sales slightly outsold James Durbin's "Memories of a Beautiful Disaster" which had 9K in sales in its third week putting his total sales at about 47K. That means I can post my graph of fall 2011 Idol releases:
"Clear As Day" Back to #1 Country, Maybe #10 Overall
I was actually over at my mother-in-law's this past Sunday helping her fix her computer when the CMA Christmas show was being rebroadcast on TV. There was Scotty again on national television singing "The First Noel" looking like he belongs there on that stage with those other big country stars. Who would have thought he was just an average high school kid just a year ago?
Do I Trust The Sales Predictions This Time?
Okay, last week on Monday HitsDailyDouble had their early 38% sales numbers and Scotty McCreery's "Clear As Day" was strongly outselling Lady Antebellum's "Own The Night" by 10%. Then their Tuesday FINAL numbers put them just about neck and neck (a 2% difference) and when the SoundScan numbers came out on Wednesday "Own The Night" sold about 15% more than "Clear As Day". Now this week the "Rumor Mill" numbers list "Clear As Day" as 50-55K and "Own The Night" is not even listed at 45-50K. LadyA is currently on tour but their shows this weekend are at Sioux City, Iowa, Springfield, Missouri and Murray, Kentucky, nice venues but not huge album sales producing cities. They won an ACA Award but did not perform on the show whereas Scotty won and performed and was shown prominently on some Idol commercials. So is it safe to assume that Scotty will be #1 Country again this week? I am not underestimating Lady Antebellum this time!
Nevertheless, Scotty's 50-55K number looks very strong and should put him quite close to 700K in total sales. The question now becomes how much inventory is being shipped to retail to cover the remaining weeks of the holiday shopping season to push "Clear As Day" to Platinum certification. Those Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Target stores want to make sure those CD's are sitting on those shelves for people to buy as last minute gifts. Scotty's total sales of 680K+ should now push him past Bo Bice (673K) to have the 15th highest selling debut album for an American Idol alumnus. He should push past Taylor Hicks (705K) and Josh Gracin (703K) next week and then sit at #13 behind David Archuleta (765K) and Adam Lambert (829K). Now he is moving in amongst the heavy hitter Idols who have sold close to or over a million in album sales.
Holy Moly, Scotty Does It Again...
I tell you, it sure is fun watching the sales numbers come in for Scotty McCreery's "Clear As Day" album. You never know what to expect except for the unexpected. This week, Scotty decided to be gentlemanly and allow Lady Antebellum to take the #1 Country slot since he will probably take it back next week. The final numbers for both of them were substantially higher than the HDD predictions with "Own The Night" selling 48,000 to be BillBoard #10 and "Clear As Day" selling 42,000 to be #11. That means for nine straight weeks Scotty has sold over 30K units every week, and over 40K for 8 out of 9 weeks. He even outsold Daughtry's second week sales of 39K. It is time for my chart of Scotty's BillBoard ranking for the past nine weeks. The Country chart ranking sure is a flat line:
#1 Country Album this week -- Too Close to Call!
Wow, yesterday with the preliminary HDD numbers "Clear As Day" led "Own The Night" in sales by over 10% (2648) with 19,834 in sales versus 17,186, but the final HDD numbers puts Lady Antebellum in the lead by a mere 818 in sales (about 2% of their ~36,000 in sales). This is too close to call until tomorrow's numbers, so I will just say they are #1 and #2 on the country charts and both will end up in the mid teens (13 to 17) on the all genre album charts. That will give "Clear As Day" nine straight weeks in the Country Top 2 and the full BillBoard Top 20. I do not remember seeing Lady Antebellum performing on the ACA Award show last night, but definitely saw Scotty appearing several times (hey, it was on FOX!), so perhaps next week he can top LA for sure. With no major country artists having a new release for the rest of the year the two of them may be battling it out for #1 and #2 country for the rest of 2011.
I also noticed both Lauren Alaina and James Durbin's albums dropped out of the Top 50 in the final HDD numbers. I will have to see what their numbers are tomorrow. I will be curious to see which of them ended up selling more albums this week since they were so close on the first predictions.
"Clear As Day" Battles "Own The Night" for #1 Country Again
I was a little concerned last week when I did not see Scotty McCreery's "Clear As Day" listed on the Hits Daily Double predicted Top 15 list in their "Rumor Mill", but on today's preliminary HDD sales chart it is back up to #8 with 19.8K in sales compared to #10 with 18.0K for Lady Antebellum's "Own The Night" (the only country artist on last weeks list):
I also noticed there are two other Season 10 Idols on the HDD Top 50 as Lauren Alaina's "Wildflower" currently re-enters the list:
It's Official, Scotty and Lauren both have big sales jumps!
Oh my goodness... Where can we buy shares in Scotty McCreery?
Lauren Alaina's "Wildflower" album did not make the Top 50, so her sales must be under 20K. James Durbin's "Memories of a Beautiful Disaster" did come in at #39 with about 26K in sales, but his number puts him amongst a crowded pack so his final BillBoard rank could go up or down by a bit. I also noticed that Brad Paisley's "This Is Country Music" is not in the Top 50 so it also must not have sold 20K units. That means "Clear As Day" should now be outselling "This Is Country Music". In fact, The Band Perry had another whopping sales gain themselves of almost 57K units (a 264% increase) so that shows that Brad is exceptionally good at picking hot selling tour mates. Perhaps the secret to album sales success is being picked to go on tour with Brad Paisley!
Wow, I Underestimated "Clear As Day" Sales... Again...
Okay, just last week I was guessing that "Clear As Day" would fall out of the Top 15 of the BillBoard charts. Can I take back that guess? HitsDailyDouble just released its Monday early estimates, and I was looking at positions 10 through 20 thinking, "Hey, where is Scotty, he didn't drop that low did he?" I saw Taylor Swift at #13 and looked below her and saw The Band Perry (#16), Lady Antebellum (#20) and Blake Shelton (#23) and kept looking lower for "Clear As Day". Surely, he did drop below the top 25, did he? But then I looked at the top 10, and there he was again staring at me at a lofty #7 with almost 48K in sales compared to 27K for Taylor Swift with only 38% of retailers reporting. When will I learn not to expect Scotty to sell like a normal human being? On my lovely chart I added 50K for Scotty for the week and 10K for Lauren, but I have no idea how much she will actually have in sales and how much over 50K Scotty will sell this week. It is better not to even guess anymore. On the early estimates James Durbin has a little over 12K in sales, so hopefully his final numbers will be significantly higher than that, but there is no way he will come close to Lauren's first week sales of 70K. I will just wait for tomorrow for the final HDD numbers and then the official SoundScan numbers on Wednesday to update my graph.
Last week I also said it would be a few weeks until 'Clear as Day" surpassed Brad Paisley's "This Is Country Music". Now I think it may very well be this week. Oh well, I can see Brad joking about it and having fun with it anyway, saying something about how Scotty and The Band Perry can help pay his Social Security.
"Clear As Day" Officially Certified Gold, Back at #1 on Country Charts
Ho hum, another week another solid week of sales for Scotty McCreery's "Clear As Day" album. What I found much more unexpected than the official gold certification this week is the fact that "Clear As Day" was able to top all the other country albums in the whole country to again reach #1 on the Country BillBoard charts. That makes seven weeks the album has been out and it has been ranked #1 for 3 weeks, #2 for 3 weeks and now back to #1 for its seventh week. And no, the album is not even by Taylor Swift! Having an album go gold in seven weeks is impressive enough, but to stay in the top 2 of the country charts that entire period is also quite a feat. His overall BillBoard placement also improved by one to #13 this week, which means for 7 straight weeks he has remained in the top 15 for all albums. Note that neither Lee nor Crystal's albums last year were ever in the Top 15 (Lee debuted at #19 and Crystal at #28). With a bunch of new releases for next week I doubt "Clear As Day" will remain in the top 15, but his sales numbers should remain strong as all album sales should increase substantially during the Thanksgiving shopping week.
My 10K prediction for Lauren's "Wildflower" was again off by 1,000, with her sales actually being 9,000 for the week, about the same as Brad Paisley's "This Is Country Music". This places Lauren's total at 145K after 6 weeks, and interestingly places Brad's total at 544K. At the pace that both Scotty's and Brad's albums are selling, I could see "Clear As Day" outselling "This is Country Music" in a few weeks which would be an interesting turn of events for Brad. Not only has The Band Perry's album outsold Brad's, but Scotty's could as well, so he could be on tour with two younger acts who have both outsold his most recent album. Hey, isn't he supposed to be the headliner?
"Clear As Day" Sells Another 30K, Stays in Top 2 on Country Chart
After the CMA Awards last week I was curious who would benefit most from album sales the following week. It appears the answer is Lady Antebellum and... Scotty McCreery, of course! From the Hits Daily Double "Rumor Mill" they list both albums "Own The Night" and "Clear As Day" as the top two selling country albums at 30K to 35K each for the week. This week I am not going to be so conservative and put the bottom of that spread on my chart but instead picked a number in the middle, 33K. Why 33K? Well, if you add that to his current sales of 467K that would put him dead on at 500K in sales for a perfectly golden number. For Lauren this week I am adding another 10K, but I would not be surprised if she surpasses that. The extra 10K puts "Wildflower" at 146K in six weeks.
I also noticed I did not post the download sale stats from Idol Chatter this Wednesday, probably because they were posted earlier than usual and I missed them! Following the CMA Awards all three tracks by the Season 10 Top 2 kept very constant from the preceding week. Their two coronation singles sold the same number as the previous week, 7K for "I Love You This Big" and 5K more for "Like My Mother Does". They have both been very consistent sellers five months after their release. "The Trouble With Girls" had a 1K increase to 18K, but I think Idol Chatter is wrong with their total of 443K! It was at 137K last week and 18K more should bring it to about 155K. I am not sure where that 443K number came from since it is much too different to be a simple typo! Where did they find that extra almost 300K in sales?
"Clear As Day" Sales Top Predictions, Remain Over 40,000 for Week 6
On Friday I thought I would be conservative and pick the bottom of the Hits Daily Double estimates for Scotty McCreery's "Clear As Day" sales to make my graph for this week. Boy, I should really learn not to be so conservative! Scanned sales for "Clear As Day" ended up going up 4% this week (due most likely to Scotty's CMA appearance and weekend performances) to end up at 42,000, topping the 35-40K estimate. That means for the last three weeks he has had sales of 42,000 then 41,000 and now 42,000. Can you say consistent? What are the odds his sales would stay the same like this week after week? This drops the album to #14 on the overall BillBoard chart and keeps it steady at #2 on the Country chart for the third week in a row. Over the first six weeks the album has impressively remained in the top 10 for the first 4 weeks, and the Top 15 for weeks 5 and 6. Hey, that sounds like another graph:
Next Tuesday James Durbin's new album "Memories of a Beautiful Disaster" will be released along with a ton of other albums hoping to cash in on the Black Friday sales the following weekend. It will be interesting to see his first week sales numbers. I do not think he has a shot of touching Scotty's sales numbers, but with the shopping weekend he may have a chance of coming close to Lauren's first week number of about 70,000. I have no idea how big his fan base is, so we will see.
Another week, and "Clear As Day" keeps on selling
Once again Lauren Alaina's "Wildflower" is not on the top 15 list, but with her also being on the CMA Awards show (and my slight under of guessing her numbers for last week) I will estimate her sales will dip by the same ratio as Scotty did. So I am guessing 11K for her next week to bring her total to 135K after 5 weeks. That puts Lauren ahead of Crystal's sales after 6 weeks.
Incidentally, "Wildflower" is still available at Amazon.com for only $4.99 as a download and now "Clear As Day" is available there for only $5.99. That means you can download both albums (24 tracks) for only $10.98 total. What are you waiting for?
It's "Clear As Day", Scotty McCreery #2 on Country Charts Again
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| Scotty needs to find room for another Gold Record |
Since the Hits Daily Double estimate was so accurate (as well as my own for "Wildflower"), my sales graph looks almost exactly the same as the one from Friday, so I thought I needed to post a different graph! But what should I do? But after I kept seeing Brad Paisley in promo photos for the CMA Award's tonight, I thought I would track the sales for the first 5 weeks of the top two selling albums released in 2011 by a male country artist. And what do you know, they are both going on tour together next year, namely Brad Paisley and Scotty McCreery. So I grabbed the numbers for "This Is Country Music" which was released May 23 (the week of the American Idol finale) to compare to Scotty's "Clear As Day" sales. After 5 weeks Brad had sold 302,000 albums, and now a few months later he is up to 524,000. This chart is not to downplay Brad who has done quite well with record sales (probably the biggest country male artist right now not named Jason Aldean), but simply to demonstrate how well Scotty is selling, and how well the both of them are doing together. So the tour next year could be called the "Golden Country Guys" tour, which is as good of a name as the "Camobunga! Tour".
Hits Daily Double Estimates 'Clear As Day' Sales Drop... Not at all?
For Lauren's "Wildflower" sales number on this graph, we know she is below both Lady Antebellum (27-30K) and Lil Wayne (24-27K) this week, and as a low ball estimate I put down 12K in sales (a 25% drop from her 16K this week) for her to add to my graph which would put her at 123K total after 4 weeks. That may not look so impressive compared to Scotty's numbers, but if you compare it to Martina McBride's "Eleven" which released on the same day, Martina only had sales of 66K after 3 weeks and will likely still stay under 80K after 4 weeks. That means Lauren's album will likely have sold 50% more albums than the current release by the incomparable, multi-platinum selling Martina McBride. "Wildflower" is on sale right now as a MP3 download for only $4.99 at Amazon MP3, so now is a good time to purchase it if you have not already. I bought it when it was $7.99 for the download, but I think the extra $3 was worth it to hear it a few weeks earlier.
Scotty and Lauren Download Numbers - November 2, 2011
Speaking of album sales, SoundScan's final numbers came out and they were only 1K off from the Hits Daily Double numbers from yesterday so I am just leaving my old chart for now. The actual numbers were 42K for Scotty (384K total) and 16K for Lauren (111K total.) So the total for both of them is 495K instead of the 497K I reported yesterday. Hey, that is still close to half a million for the two of them.
Final Hits Daily Double Numbers Puts Scotty McCreery 3/4 of the Way to Gold
American Idol Season 10 Track Download Numbers - The Week after
Now that it has been a week since Lauren Alaina's "Wildflower" album release we can see the download sales for both Lauren and Scotty without one of them releasing an album. I believe the release of both albums helped both of their download sales for those weeks. This week both Lauren and Scotty only have two tracks each listed on Brian's Idol Track Chart for the week. Scotty has "I Love You This Big" and "The Trouble With Girls", both with sales of 9,000 (although since ILTYB is listed first I am guessing it had more sales. Lauren's two listed tracks are "Like My Mother Does" with 9,000 (listed between ILYTB and TTWG so I am guessing the sales for the week was ILYTB > LMMD > TTWG) and her new popular album track, "Dirt Road Prayer", with 4,000 downloads (21,000 total in two weeks.) I updated my graph so that the total "Scotty" tally is 18,000 for the week from his two tracks and 13,000 for Lauren with hers.
I noticed that Brian's article this week did not have the total for LMMD but since last week's total was 305K, I am guessing she must now be at 314K. Scotty's total with ILYTB has now reached 654K and TTWG has broken the 100K barrier to hit 105K giving him 759K in downloads from his first two singles so far. Together they have sold well over a million downloads now.
Scotty = $5 x 191K + $10 x 342K = $4.375M
Lauren = $5 x 85K + $10 x 95K = $1.375M
Added together that is $5.75 million the two of them have sold! And I am not even considering the track downloads of over $1 million. Wow. Someone over at UMG Mercury is getting a big bonus this year! (Meanwhile Scotty is still eating off the dollar menu at the Garner McDonalds...)
Idol Seaon 10 Album Sales Numbers - October 26, 2011
I was hoping on having the single download numbers today, but Brian at Idol Chatter has not released them yet, so I can at least post my finalized graph of 3 week album sales results for the past 3 years of Idol. From Roughstock.com's exact numbers, Scotty McCreery's "Clear As Day" sold 57K more this past week to total 342K after three weeks, and Lauren Alaina's "Wildflower" sold 26K more to give her 95K albums sold in her first two weeks. I was able to retrieve numbers for both Season 8 and Season 9 to add Kris Allen, Adam Lambert, Lee DeWyze and Crystal Bowersox's first three weeks of sales to compare to the two latest Idol winners. One thing I noticed is that Lauren and Crystal continue to track very similar numbers, but I do not think that will last long since Lauren is already scheduled for some high profile country performances heading into the holidays which are bound to push her sales higher than Crystal's. Plus Crystal's early sales were boosted by the holiday season last December whereas Lauren has time to promote her single and album before the big holiday season kicks in. The other interesting comparison is between Scotty and Adam Lambert's "For Your Entertainment", which started out with very similar opening weeks, but now Scotty is selling substantially faster. With Adam being helped by a holiday boost in his early sales, this is also good news for Scotty's sales, since Adam's album actually sold quite well (over 800K in total sales)!
HitsDailyDouble has its preliminary debut numbers for next week out, and they currently have Kelly Clarkson's "Stronger" estimated to sell 155K to 165K which is very similar to Scotty's original estimates the Wednesday after "Clear As Day" was released. Perhaps Kelly will also be lucky like Scotty was and surpass the estimates by a good margin. Nevertheless that is a pretty strong number for Kelly which will probably end up being another gold certification (if not platinum) for her. She should easily be #2 on the Billboard chart behind Coldplay. I also noticed that Toby Keith's new album, "Clancy's Tavern" is estimated to sell 50K to 60K. That should be good enough to put him at #1 on the country chart, but Scotty may come fairly close, depending how much his sales drop and how accurate Toby's estimates are to reality.
Hits Daily Double Predicts Solid Sales for Scotty McCreery and Lauren Alaina for Next Week
As posted on MJ's blog, Hits Daily Double is predicting that "Clear As Day" will sell 60K to 65K for its third week and 'Wildflower" will sell 28K to 30K for its second week. That would give Scotty his third consecutive #1 BillBoard country album raking and Lauren would fall from #2 to #3 on the country chart behind Lady Antebellum's "Own the Night". Scotty would actually rise on the overall Billboard chart from #4 to #3 and Lauren should remain in the Top 10. That will put Scotty's 3 week total for "Clear As Day" at almost 350K and Lauren's two week total for "Wildflower" at 100K. Lauren's album sales are currently tracking just slightly higher than Crystal Bowersox did last year, but she with more radio airplay and scheduled TV appearances she should be able to maintain a better profile heading into the holiday season. With Lauren's Ellen performance today and Scotty's new video also being released today, there is no shortage of current publicity for both of them so their sales should continue to increase. They should have combined album sales over the 500K point by next week for sure, something Lee and Crystal never achieved.
No, Jose, Scotty McCreery just keeps getting more press!
Here are a few of the many YouTube clips of his performance :
American Idol Season 10 Download Stats after both Album Releases
Now that Lauren Alaina's "Wildflower" album has been released we can see how many people decided to download specific songs from the album. Just like with Scotty McCreery's "Clear As Day" release last week there are six tracks from her new album which show up on the Idol Chatter download track sales list. But unlike Scotty whose download sales are led by his two radio singles, Lauren's top seller was "Dirt Road Prayer" which sold 17,000, outselling not only Lauren's single "Like My Mother Does" (15,000), but also both of Scotty's tracks on the list, "I Love You This Big" (14,000) and "The Trouble With Girls" (11,000). In fact the total of Lauren's six tracks on the list this week almost exactly matches the total sold by Scotty's top six tracks last week, about 50,000 downloads. Besides "Dirt Road Prayer" and "Like My Mother Does", the other four tracks from "Wildflower" appearing on the list are: "The Middle" (6,000), "One of Those Boys" (5,000), "Georgia Peaches" (4,000) and "She's a Wildflower" (3,000). So even though Lauren's album sales are not as high as Scotty's, her download sales on her debut week are fairly equivalent. It will be interesting to see how their sales continue from this point forward now that the "debut" buzz will be diminishing.
Scotty and Lauren in BillBoard Top 5 overall, #1 and #2 in Country
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.
Season 10 Song Download Numbers - "Clear As Day" release week
I was curious how many song downloads Scotty McCreery would receive on the same week as "Clear As Day" was released, so I was happy to see Brian Mansfield at USA Today finally posted them this morning. Not only did "I Love You This Big" and "The Trouble With Girls" receive large boosts in download sales (ILYTB up 108% with 18,000 downloads and TTWG up 143% with 12,000), but so did four other tracks on the album, "Out of Summertime" with 8,000 downloads, "Water Tower Town" with 5,000, "You Make That Look Good" with 4,000 and "Clear As Day" with 4,000. If you add up the totals for all six of those tracks that adds up to 51K downloads so I replaced the line on my graph that was the sum of ILYTB and TTWG with the sales all the other listed tracks. In reality the other 6 songs on the album probably account for another 10,000 to 20,000 more downloads, but it is hard to predict how their sales tailed off.
Scotty and Lauren's Albums show the Real winner of American Idol Season 10 is....
Scotty McCreery's #1 BillBoard sales of 197,000 for "Clear As Day" were just announced and after listening to Lauren Alaina's new album, "Wildflower" (only $7.99 at Amazon.com!), I can easily see who has won American Idol Season 10. No, I am not going to say it was Lauren, and I am not going to say it is Scotty either. The winner is obviously UMG Mercury Nashville records who will most likely end up with two #1 Billboard Country albums from two very malleable and marketable teen country stars. People may have complained about having two teen country idols, but after hearing both albums they each definitely lean in two different directions. Scotty's "Clear As Day" has a very "modern traditional" sound that will appeal to a lot of people who prefer more traditional country music (especially older folks who actually buy physical CD's and do not download illegally from file sharing sites.) Lauren's "Wildflower" leans much more to a pop radio country sound which will appeal to not only to the younger country crowd but also with more crossover interest from the broader pop market. I think her album sounds very good, and I was never a big fan of her during Idol. I think it will most likely outsell Scotty's second week sales (and Martina McBride) to hit #1 on the country charts. My least favorite part of the "Wildflower" CD is the cover art, which I think portrays the album even less now after I have heard it in its entirety. I am guessing next week she will break 100K, and Scotty will be slightly under, but in any case it's a win-win scenario for UMG Nashville. I do not think they really care who is the #1 and who is the #2 country album next week as long as they are both their artists!
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