LIFE’S A BEACH
FOR KENNY CHESNEY

Surf and turf all around. Kenny Chesney’s beach-bum opus, Be As You Are: Songs from an Old Blue Chair (BNA), tops this week’s album chart with a sales total north of 303k.

Despite being something of a departure for Chesney and not aimed at his core country audience, the Old Blue Chair was a-rockin’ all week, and now has bested last week’s #1, The Game’s The Documentary (Aftermath/G-Unit/Interscope) by some 40k units. The Game settles in at #2 on a 57% second-week dip to just shy of 264k.

This week’s second-highest debut also has a country flavor: LeAnn Rimes’ This Woman (Curb) comes in at #3 on 98k sold, as the former child prodigy, now 22, get back in touch with her country audience—in contrast to Chesney’s temporary digression.

The rest of the Top Five, Green Day’s American Idiot (Reprise) and Eminem’s Encore (Shady/Interscope), both register small gains over last week’s figures while dropping two chart positions: Green Day’s up 4% to 91k and moves #2-4, while Eminem gains 1% to 74k and moves #3-5.

The week’s biggest improvement goes to Rascal Flatts’ Feels Like Today (Lyric Street), which sees a 32% gain to 38k and moves #32-23. Also moving up are Chesney’s When the Sun Goes Down (BNA), which gains 26% to 24k and moves #44-42 (thanks to the new album, no doubt) and Fantasia’s Free Yourself (J/RMG), which gains 25% to 50k and moves #16-11.

Other notable debuts this week include indie singer/songwriter Conor Oberst’s Bright Eyes, whose twin releases I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning and Digital Ash in a Digital Urn (Saddle Creek) come on the chart at #18 and #28, respectively, and account for almost 75k in sales combined, and gangsta-rap pioneers Geto Boys, whose recent return to recording, The Foundation (Asylum/Rap-A-Lot), charts at #22 on nearly 39k sold.