John Prine’s “The Tree of Forgiveness” Shatters Sales Expectations, Surges on the Charts
John Prine enters this week’s charts with 54,000 equivalent album sales, and 53,000 total units in pure album sales. This puts Prine virtually parallel with Jason Isbell’s 2017 album The Nashville Sound in album sales and streaming equivalents, and it means he beats Isbell by 2,000 albums in pure album sales. It also beats Sturgill Simpson’s A Sailor’s Guide to Earth (though not officially independent) by 1,000 in pure album sales.
This is also by far the best chart performance for John Prine in his career. The 54,000 album equivalents is not just good for #2 in country, but #5 on the Billboard 200, and #4 in all of music in pure album sales. At 71-years-old, John Prine just had his best sales week since Nielsen Music began tracking and verifying sales starting in 1991. In all likelihood, last week was John Prine’s best sales week of his entire career.