Carrie Underwood tops charts with sales of 500,000 plus

The sales - 527,101 to be exact - made Underwood's disc the best selling debut week of any female artist this year and was the highest debut week sales of any sophomore album in SoundScan history. In this day and age where CD sales are down, "Carnival Ride" was 60 percent ahead o her 6-million selling debut, "Some Hearts," in its debut week.

Underwood led a one-two-three on the overall charts with Alison Krauss and Robert Plant's "Raising Sand" second and Gary Allan's "Life is Tough" third.

"Raising Sand" (Rounder) sold 112,000. It's the highest charting album for both as solo artists and Krauss's first time in the top 10.

Allan's "Living Hard" sold 69,000 units. Allan's "Greatest Hits" debuted at number five in March.

Underwood also enjoyed digital sales of 44,928, the largest country debut in digital album chart history.

Underwood has recently been featured on Good Morning America, Live with Regis and Kelly, The Early Show, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, the third game of the World Series (singing the National Anthem), and has upcoming performances on The Ellen DeGeneres Show (Nov. 5), a second Good Morning America (Nov. 12), and The Late Show with David Letterman (Nov. 13).

Underwood will perform on The 41st Annual CMA Awards on Nov. 7, where she is a triple nominee, up for Female Vocalist of the Year, as well as Single of the Year and Music Video of the Year (for "Before He Cheats," which also earned a Song of the Year nomination for its songwriters).

"Carnival Ride's' first single, "So Small," is currently inside the country airplay Top 5 and follows a string of four consecutive number one country singles from her first album. Released in November 2005, "Some Hearts" became the best-selling, single-disc country album by a solo female in the new millennium and, with sales topping 1.3 million copies this year alone, has so far remained the best-selling country album of 2007.