Bailey Zimmerman Shines on Top Country Albums Chart With ‘Leave the Light On’

Bailey Zimmerman‘s debut collection Leave the Light On debuts at No. 2 on Billboard‘s Top Country Albums chart (dated Oct. 29). Released Oct. 14, the eight-song set earned 32,000 equivalent album units in its first week, ending Oct. 20, according to Luminate.

The first Top Country Albums entry for the 22-year-old from Louisville, Ill., concurrently starts at No. 9 on the all-genre Billboard 200, where he also makes his first appearance. Zimmerman, who worked at a meat processing plant and on a gas pipeline prior to his career in music, co-wrote six songs on the project, which Austin Shawn produced.

Zimmerman made history on the streaming-, airplay- and sales-based Hot Country Songs chart dated Sept. 3 when he became the first act to place three career-opening entries in the top 10 simultaneously, since the list began as an all-encompassing genre ranking in October 1958: “Rock and a Hard Place,” “Where It Ends” and “Fall in Love.”

“My life went from, like, nothing to 100, just so fast,” Zimmerman — who boasts 1.7 million followers on TikTok — recently told Billboard. “I started reading books. [Fellow country artist] Drew Baldridge has been like a mentor for me. He was like, ‘Dude, get the book All You Need to Know About the Music Business [by Donald Passman].’ I learned how labels worked, all kinds of stuff. I still have a lot to learn, but I dove in to learn what’s going on.”

On the Oct. 29 dated Hot Country Songs survey, Zimmerman charts five titles, including two in the top 10. “Rock” pushes 9-6 with 13.7 official streams and 2,000 downloads sold. It also ranks at No. 58 on Country Airplay with 568,000 audience impressions (up 7%). “Fall,” his current proper radio single, holds at its No. 8 Country Airplay high (17.2 million, up 3%), also with 9 million streams and 3,000 sold.

Zimmerman rounds out his current Hot Country Songs haul with “Where” (No. 28; 4.9 million streams); “Never Leave” (No. 35; 5.1 million streams, up 40%); and “Waiting” (No. 36 debut; 2.5 million first-week streams).

‘Delight’-ful Debut

Alabama‘s “Dixieland Delight” arrives on the Country Digital Song Sales chart, sparked by the intense college football rivalry between University of Alabama’s Crimson Tide and the University of Tennessee’s Volunteers.

The track, which led Hot Country Songs in April 1983, becoming the band’s ninth of 33 No. 1s (the most among duos or groups), enters Country Digital Song Sales at No. 13 with 1,500 sold, up 684%.

For those who don’t follow NCAA football, here’s a playbook on the song’s resurgence: Tennessee beat Alabama 52-49 on Oct. 15 at the former’s Neyland Stadium courtesy of a game-winning 40-yard field goal by Chase McGrath, ending a 15-game losing streak for Tennessee against Alabama dating to 2006.

Not unexpectedly, Tennessee fans got a tad rambunctious after the game, flooding the field and knocking over one of their own goalposts (reportedly at a cost of $100,000). As the orange-clad kids filed onto the field, the public address system ribbingly blared “Dixieland Delight” … normally played after the Crimson Tide wins at its home field (Bryant-Denny Stadium, in Tuscaloosa, Ala.)

Aided by buzz and press coverage, the song, solo-penned by Ronnie Rogers (who also wrote Alabama’s 1990 Hot Country Songs No. 1 “Jukebox in My Mind”), additionally gained by 44% in official on-demand streams, to 1.2 million, in the week ending Oct. 20.

Since Country Digital Song Sales began in 2010, Alabama charted one prior entry: Brad Paisley’s “Old Alabama,” on which the band is featured. The collaboration arrived at its No. 2 peak in April 2011. It went on to dominate Hot Country Songs for two frames that June, marking the group’s most recent No. 1 and first since “Reckless” in 1993.