Monday news: charts, hearts, and new reviews...

Bucky Covington takes the stage at the Big Hearts Bash concert in Fayetteville, April 20th; photo by the very generous noplclkhmlbg. You can see more of her great shots from the evening in her lovely Photobucket gallery. (Thanks so much!) Bucky Covington's debut CD is in stores now, and his music video is available for online viewing at CMT.com and Yahoo Music. You can buy Bucky's album at Amazon, Best Buy , iTunes and Target, hear the full version of his single "A Different World" at CMT and GAC, preview his entire CD at Clear Channel Music, or enjoy samples of songs from the CD at Bucky's official MySpace. An autographed copy of Bucky Covington can be ordered while supplies last at his official site or via his official fan club.

Edited to add: Bucky's video for "A Different World" faces a head-to-head challenge on today's CMT Power Picks. The show begins at 12 noon ET--tune in; log on, and be ready to vote for Bucky!

It's hard to believe, but time flies when you're having fun. Tomorrow marks the end of the first week that Bucky Covington's debut CD (listen to it online here) has been available on the shelves of your local music retailer. How did he do, and what can we look forward to?

Hits Daily Double (soon to be added to the sidebar, under the Mediabase links; registration required) tracks album sales beginning every Monday at about 7:30 a.m. Pacific time. The charts are auto-updated at five-minute intervals, and the final estimates are in on Tuesdays. A few days ago, the magazine made a prediction based on Bucky's first day sales--""Bucky Covington, yet another American Idol alum, appears to be headed for first-week sales of around 60k, which would put him solidly in the Top 10 and maybe even in the Top 5 next week." We'll soon find out how accurate that prediction was! (Nielsen SoundScan, which is the official sales source for the Billboard music charts, releases their data on Wednesdays.)

In one of the radio interviews last week, a DJ referenced a quote from Bucky's labelmate Josh Gracin, who felt that the first 50,000 in sales reflected the American Idol souvenir factor; the rest are really about the artist, him or her self. In Bucky's case, strong word of mouth and lots of positive reviews are likely to help his album transcend that "Idol memorabilia" image sooner than most. The reviews are still coming in--this one, from Josh Stewart of the Long Island Press, is especially enjoyable:

Joining the likes of Josh Gracin and Kellie Pickler is Bucky Covington, who, frankly, hits it out of the park in his debut. Looking at the song titles before playing his self-titled CD ("A Different World," "Back When We Were Gods," The Bible and the Belt") could produce fears that such nostalgic themes will come off as pandering coming from a guy who is only 29. But Covington is so believable that insincerity isn’t an issue. This would’ve been a successful debut if it was just a kick-ass country-rock bar album, and to a large extent that is its charm. But the tender narrative "I’ll Walk"—think Blake Shelton’s "Austin" or Rascal Flatts’ "Skin (Sarabeth)"—quickly proves that Covington isn’t a one-trick pony. America may have voted Covington off early in 2006, but one spin of this CD and they’ll be rethinking their ballots.

We'll take that, thanks...

While we're waiting for Tuesday's final word on Bucky's first-week sales, we've still got the joy of following--and supporting--"A Different World" as it continues its run on the country singles and video charts. We'll link to the Mediabase Top 500 and weighted charts right here--Monday's a.m. charts should be available by the time you read this, and with any luck that bitter fight for the #22 spot should be resolved in Bucky's favor soon. And we can keep Bucky's excellent run on the video charts going strong with our votes at CMT's Pure Country Pure 12-Pack video countdown and at GAC's Top Twenty Country Countdown today, too.

Bucky's schedule for the coming week is a little more relaxed than the wild coast-to-coast travels of last week--but not by much. According to his official site, BuckyCovington.com, he'll be performing at a private event sponsored by WEZL in Charleston on Tuesday, then doing an appearance in Atlanta before heading West for shows in Monterey, Las Vegas and Cedar City, Utah. There are still plenty of memories from Bucky's debut promo blitz popping up, though--his KKNG interview is now available on podcast, and the very kind noplclkhmlbg shares a lot of lovely shots from the WKML Big Hearts Bash in her profile at the Fox boards and at Photobucket, where you'll find her great video clips, as well. (Thanks, noplclkhmlbg!)

(Edited again to point you to Kathy's latest post at Team Covington, where she has a video clip from Bucky's weekend Wal-Mart in-store appearance that you won't want to miss. Looks like Bucky's got the hometown love, for sure!)

More soon--c'mon back...