Brooks’ ‘Chase’ Riding High

Garth Brooks’ “The Chase” album continues to hold the No. 1 spot on the nation’s pop album charts, setting a high for second-week sales since Billboard magazine began using the SoundScan monitoring system in May of 1991.

The album’s 413,000 tally last week is up 10,000 over Brooks’ first-week total and 38,000 higher than the previous high for second-week sales set by Michael Jackson’s “Dangerous” last December.

Sales were also strong for four other Brooks’ albums last week, allowing the country singer to continue to hold five of the Top 50 slots on the pop chart. Those albums sold a total of 180,000 copies.

Like such other country artists as Billy Ray Cyrus, the duo of Brooks & Dunn, George Strait and Mary-Chapin Carpenter, Brooks probably benefited greatly from the exposure gained on last week’s CBS telecast of the 26th Annual Country Music Awards Show, which was seen by an estimated 31 million people.