Carrie Underwood's Carnival Ride Soars Up Charts

Carrie Underwood's 2007 CD, Carnival Ride. Photo courtesy of SonyBMG.

November 1, 2007 — Carrie Underwood's sophomore CD, Carnival Ride, has vaulted to No. 1 on both the Billboard Country Albums chart and the all-genre Top 200 with first-week sales of 527,101.

Setting multiple chart records, the album is the best selling by a female artist so far this year and boasts not only the highest debut-week sales for a sophomore album ever but also the most digital sales during a debut week in country history with 44,928 downloads sold.

The album's sales are 60 percent higher than the 315,000 Carrie sold during the debut week of her 2005 debut Some Hearts. She has also achieved the best sales week for a female solo country artist since Shania Twain's Greatest Hits scored a first-week total of 530,000 in November 2004.

Carrie tells Dial-Global that she's much more pleased with this album than her first because she had more input while recording it. "I think there's a lot more of me on it," she says, "so I personally am a lot more satisfied with this album than the first one. Hopefully, people will love it and if they don't, I love it."

Also, in a Billboard 200 first, three country debuts occupy the top three slots on the chart, with Robert Plant and Alison Krauss' Raising Sand following Carrie at No. 2 and Gary Allan's Living Hard landing at No. 3.

Carrie will perform on The 41st Annual CMA Awards on Nov. 7, where she is nominated for three awards: Female Vocalist, Single and Music Video of the Year for "Before He Cheats," which also earned a Song of the Year nomination for its songwriters.