Alan Jackson’s Thirty Miles West has debuted at the top of Billboard’s Top Country Albums sales chart, making it his 13th album to debut in the No. 1 spot on release week. The album also bows at No. 2 on Billboard’s Top 200 Albums sales chart that includes all genres of music, bested only by chart-blazing Adele’s album 21. This is the best first-week sales for Jackson since the release of his platinum-selling Good Time in 2008. Released on June 5, Thirty Miles West is Jackson’s first new release on ACR (Alan’s Country Records)/ EMI Records Nashville.
Thirty Miles West is already proving itself as an acclaimed recording. “Jackson handles both real-life drama and sly humor with laid-back grace – making Thirty Miles West another example of how to keep traditional country music relevant in modern times,” said the Associated Press, which also noted, “No other artist of his generation deserves this destiny more, for no other has better represented the traditions of country music than this Georgia native."
"Thirty Miles West is built on the twin pillars of Jackson’s trademark sound: country-soul ballads and twanging modern honky-tonk,” said the Chicago Tribune, adding, “He may be surrounded on the charts by a sea of Nashville pop and rock artists, but Jackson remains a country traditionalist to the bone.”
The new album resonates with “the straightforward, down-to-earth style that has helped to make him, both artistically and commercially, such an enduring success,” said the Philadelphia Inquirer. People notes, “Thirty Miles West is a journey worth taking."
“Jackson does sublimely expressive things with the album’s lead single, ‘So You Don’t Have to Love Me Anymore,’ a fine, old-fashioned tear-jerker that captures a distinctly masculine blend of gallantry, taciturnity and martyrdom,” said the New York Times.
“So You Don’t Have to Love Me Anymore” continues to climb the country charts, residing inside the Top 25 this week. The music video for the song, filmed at Coney Island in New York, has topped the GAC Top 20 and become a Top 10 hit on the CMT Top 20 Countdown.
Jackson wrote six of the 13 songs included on Thirty Miles West. Writing about the new album, Billboard reported, “Jackson is in an elite group of songwriters, including Paul McCartney and John Lennon, who’ve written more than 20 of their own chart-topping tunes. In the country format, he’s second only to Merle Haggard in terms of writing or co-writing No. 1 hits that he’s also recorded."
Thirty Miles West is Jackson’s 14th studio album; it’s the latest in an unbroken string of 20 albums that have reached the Top 10 on Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart. That list also includes three hits collections, two holiday albums, and his acclaimed 2006 gospel album, Precious Memories, which remains one of the Top 3 best-selling Catalog Country Albums this week.
