Reigning American Idol and Mercury Nashville/19 Recordings/Interscope artist Scotty McCreery debuts at No. 1 on the Billboard Top 200 and Top Country Albums charts with Clear As Day, making him the youngest male in history to open at the top of the all-genre chart with a debut release. This is also the highest first-week album sales of any solo country artist in 2011.
With first-week sales totaling 196,739, he is the first new country artist this year to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. Scotty has the second-highest debut week for a new artist in all genres in 2011, behind rapper J.Cole. He is the first American Idol winner in eight years to land his debut album atop the Billboard 200 and the first country male singer from the show to do so. This is the first debut by a new country artist to top 100,000 in first-week sales since Carrie Underwood’s in 2005.“My hopes were just to go out there and have fun and let people know that the album was out there. Everybody hopes for the number one, but you never really expect it. To see it up there is pretty incredible,” says Scotty, who turned 18 on Sunday. “It’s a very good birthday present! I can’t think of anything to top it!”