Music

Luke Bryan Stays Front and Center With Kill the Lights

Dustin Lynch Scores Second Chart-Topper With “Hell of a Night”
by 9/10/2015

Luke Bryan seems to have taken a long-term lease on the top floor of Billboard’s country albums chart. His Kill the Lights is spending its fourth consecutive week there.

Meanwhile, Dustin Lynch powers his “Hell of a Night” into the No. 1 slot of the country airplay rankings. It arrives there after a 44-week trek.

This is Lynch’s second chart-topper, his first being “Where It’s At (Yep, Yep).” Maddie & Tae boast the highest-debuting album — Start Here — which bows at No. 2 on first-week sales of 23,682 copies, according to Nielsen Soundscan.

By contrast, Kill the Lights sold 37,970 copies this past week.

There’s only one other new album to acknowledge — the multi-artist Mud Digger, Volume 6, which enters at No. 15.

Returning to the chart are George Strait’s The Cowboy Rides Away: Live From AT&T Stadium (No. 46) and Billy Currington’s Summer Forever (No. 50).

Four songs are making their first chart appearance. They are Brad Paisley’s “Country Nation” (No. 53), Brantley Gilbert’s “Stone Cold Sober” (No. 58), Michael Ray’s “Real Men Love Jesus” (No. 59) and Sam Hunt’s “Break Up in a Small Town” (No. 60).

The No. 3, No. 4 and No. 5 albums, in that order, are Hunt’s Montevallo, the Zac Brown Band’s Jekyll + Hyde and Eric Church’s The Outsiders.

Completing the Top 5 songs array are Thomas Rhett’s “Crash and Burn,” Keith Urban’s “John Cougar, John Deere, John 3:16,” Chris Janson’s “Buy Me a Boat” and Hunt’s “House Party” (last week’s No. 1).

Which of this week’s four new songs — if any of them — do you predict will eventually go No. 1?

Edward Morris is a veteran of country music journalism. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee, and is a frequent contributor to CMT.com.