Carrie Underwood‘s new album, Cry Pretty, has debuted at the top of Billboard’s Top 200 Album chart . The collection is the biggest all-genre debut by a female in 2018, topping Cardi B’s Invasion of Privacy (April 6, 2018).
The album debuted at No. 1 on both the Billboard 200 and Top Country Album Charts with 265,654 equivalent album units, making Underwood the only woman in history to land four country albums at the top of the all-genre Billboard 200 chart.
The critically-acclaimed album is the best-selling Country album debut of 2018, as well as the biggest Country album debut since August 7, 2015 (Luke Bryan’s Kill The Lights) and the biggest female Country album debut since October 22, 2012 (Taylor Swift’s 2012 Red).
Cry Pretty’s debut week also marks the most first week streams by any female in Country music. This is Underwood’s seventh consecutive album to debut at No. 1 on the Top Country Albums chart, representing all of her first seven albums including her Greatest Hits: Decade #1.
NPR declares that Cry Pretty “pushes her creative boundaries and leans into modern R&B, while retaining the Oklahoma singer-songwriter’s country roots” and “Underwood’s voice owns pretty much anything it touches.”
Rolling Stone lauds Underwood as “Arena country’s mightiest voice, as Cry Pretty reaffirms.”
Entertainment Weekly has called the album “Her most emotionally accessible work to date.”
All of this is pretty impressive, right? But Carrie just hopes fans will listen to it and get a better glimpse into who she is.
“I literally meet fan club members and fans at meet and greets and things like that that will say, ‘I voted for you on American Idol. I’ve been a fan club member since it started,’ and that’s absolutely incredible. I feel like we’ve kind of just all grown and evolved together, and I feel like that’s so cool. I hope they listen to this album and maybe get a bigger glimpse of me and who I am because I definitely feel like this project has been a bigger representation of me as a person, as an artist, as a creative being, because I’ve had so much more of a hands-on approach with this album than I’ve ever had before.”