Lionel Ritchie returns to the coveted top spot at No. 1 on the Billboard chart with his country-infused “Tuskegee”. At age 62, Ritchie has welcomed the full country flavor that we’ve heard throughout his career and has teamed up with some of the biggest hitmakers in contemporary country music today. Shania Twain, Blake Shelton,  legendary Willie Nelson and others have all come together to take what was already a ‘Lionel’ classic, a ‘Lionel’ country classic!

“Tuskegee” sold 129,000 copies last week, and sales have continued to do since its debut, in the last weeks of March. Lionel’s album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard’s country album chart the week of April 7th and Nielsen SoundScan reports the collection sold a whopping 198,892 copies its first seven days out to debut @ No. 2 on the all-genre Billboard 200.

HSN, the TV shopping network, launched a live concert series on March 16th, and enlisted Lionel’s help to kick off the series.  The first “HSN Live” concert proved to be an opportune time and place to perform titles off of “Tuskegee”, and Ritchie parlayed that performance into sales of more than 20,000 CD’s in an hour.  The HSN Live concert, along with Richie’s SXSW appearance earlier this month, have proven to be precursors to an upcoming world tour. Lionel, we always knew you were country, we at Faux Society are just happy that YOU finally realized it!

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