Country Artist Thomas Rhett Tops The Billboard 200 Chart

Country singer/songwriter Thomas Rhett achieves his first No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart, as his new effort Life Changes bows atop the list.

The set -- which brings country back to No. 1 for the first time in exactly one year -- earned 123,000 equivalent album units in the week ending Sept. 14, according to Nielsen Music. Of that sum, 94,000 were in traditional album sales, Rhett’s best sales week and the third largest sales week of 2017 for a country effort.

The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption, which includes traditional album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). The new Sept. 30-dated chart (where Life Changes debuts at No. 1) will be posted in full on Billboard’s websites Tuesday (Sept. 19).

Life Changes is the first No. 1 country album in 2017, and the first in a year -- since Jason Aldean’s They Don’t Know spent one week in the penthouse on the list dated Oct. 1, 2016.