If one were to wager which country music artist would reign atop this week’s Billboard 200, the safe bet would have been frequent chart-topper Eric Church, who surprise-released his new album Mr. Misunderstood just hours before the CMA Awards. However, Chris Stapleton’s domination of country music’s biggest night – wins for Best New Artist, Male Vocalist and Album of the Year, plus a breakthrough performance with Justin Timberlake – rocketed that singer’s Traveller from charts obscurity to Number One.
SIDEBAR
Following Stapleton’s monster night at the CMAs, Traveller sold 177,000 total albums, 153,000 of which were pure album sales.
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/on-the-charts-chris-stapleton-travels-to-number-one-after-huge-cma-awards-20151109#ixzz3r1QcNfOg
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