To celebrate the genre's big week with Billboard's Country Summit and the CMT Music Awards, we've combed the Billboard Hot Country Songs and Top Country Albums charts to rank the top 25 country artists of the last 25 years (1985-2010).
How This Chart Was Created
The Top County Artists 1985-2010 ranking is based on actual performance on the weekly Hot Country Songs and Top Country Albums charts from January 5, 1985 to the Billboard issue dated May 29, 2010. Artists are ranked based on an inverse point system, with weeks at No. 1 earning the greatest value and weeks at the lower end of the chart earning the least.
Prior to the Hot Country Song's implementation in January 1990 of monitored radio airplay by Nielsen BDS and the Top Country Albums incorporation of point-of-purchase sales date from Nielsen SoundScan in May 1991, titles on those lists had shorter reigns at No. 1 and shorter chart lives. To ensure equitable representation from all 25 years, earlier time frames were each weighted to account for the difference between turnover rates from those years and the turnover rates that have occurred since the advent of Nielsen Music data.
#14 SHANIA TWAIN
Though absent from Country Songs since 2005, Twain remains the best-selling female country album artist since Nielsen's SoundScan began tracking sales in 1991, having sold 33.9 million albums in that span. Her lasting pop culture prominence was reaffirmed when she served as a mentor this past season on "American Idol"; following the April 27 and 28 episodes, Twain's "Greatest Hits" soared back onto the Billboard 200. "It was emotional for me to listen to every one of their gorgeous voices singing my words," Twain blogged of the top six finalists. "Every one of them thoroughly entertained me and reminded me of how lucky I am to be a songwriter."
http://www.billboard.com/features/t...004095821.story
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