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It's Still a Brad Paisley-Lady Antebellum World on Country Charts

Miranda Lambert's "Only Prettier" Is Top New Song

Brad Paisley's "Water" is the crowning country song for the second week, Billboard reports, while Lady Antebellum's Need You Now luxuriates in its 23rd week as the No. 1 country album.

There are no new albums entering the chart this period, but three CDs have returned: Rodney Atkins' It's America (back at No. 59), the Grascals' The Famous Lefty Flynn's (No. 61) and Brantley Gilbert's A Modern Day Prodigal Son (No. 68).

Miranda Lambert's "Only Prettier" is the highest-debuting new song, bowing in at No. 45. The other newcomers are John Rich's "Country Done Come to Town" (No. 52), Danny Gokey's "I Will Not Say Goodbye" (No. 53), the Zac Brown Band's "A Different Kind of Fine" (No. 58), Stealing Angels' "He Better Be Dead" (No. 59) and LeAnn Rimes' "Swingin'" (No. 60).

Parading in behind Need You Now in the Top 5 albums unit are the Zac Brown Band's The Foundation, Miranda Lambert's Revolution, Jaron and the Long Road to Love's Getting Dressed in the Dark and Carrie Underwood's Play On, in that order.

The No. 2 through No. 5 songs are Jason Aldean's "Crazy Town," Luke Bryan's "Rain Is a Good Thing," Clay Walker's "She Won't Be Lonely Long" and Carrie Underwood's "Undo It."

Keep an eye out for Billy Currington's "Pretty Good at Drinkin' Beer." It's galloped to No. 15 in just seven weeks.

This column often mentions the generally sorry state of country album sales. But there are some bright spots worth noting. Need You Now, for example, has sold more than 2.3 million copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Looking at other titles released this year, we see that Josh Turner's Haywire total tops 276,000. Blake Shelton's Hillbilly Bone has steamed past 217,000. Easton Corbin's self-titled debut album has racked up sales of nearly 190,000 units. And Danny Gokey's My Best Days is bordering on 160,000.

If you like really big numbers, consider that Taylor Swift's Fearless has sold just under 6 million albums in its 86 weeks on the chart. During that same period, the Zac Brown Band's The Foundation has blown past 2 million copies. And Jason Aldean's Wide Open has passed the 1.2 million mark in 65 weeks.

So smile.

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