Eric Church Debuts at No. 1 With ‘The Outsiders’

Eric Church's latest album, 'The Outsiders,' debuted in the No. 1 slot on the all-genre Billboard 200 chart, selling an impressive 288,000 copies in its first week of release.

The early success of his latest record tops his 2011 'Chief' record, which also debuted at No. 1, and sold 145,000 units the week it was released. It marks the biggest country music release since Luke Bryan's 2013 'Crash My Party,' which sold 528,000 units.

The North Carolina native acknowledged this record would be unlike any of his previous projects.

“It’s a bit of a statement,” Church says of 'The Outsiders.' “I wanted to send a message with this album that it’s gonna be different, it’s gonna be another level.”

The 36-year-old drew on his eclectic influences when writing for his latest set of tunes. “[The album's] a cross between Waylon [Jennings] and Metallica," he explains. "It’s very creative and it’s very free-flowing with its creativity.”

Church just released the second single, 'Give Me Back My Hometown,' from the album, along with a video that offers more questions than answers.

“I love mysteries,” he explains. “That’s kind of where this whole video thing, when we started this teaser thing, we already had the concept for what these videos were gonna be. And we wanted it to be this big mystery, level of intrigue, that just was fun for fans that we could have this thing of trying to figure it out and looking at where clues were.”

He adds that the characters that appear in the video for 'Give Me Back My Hometown' will appear in subsequent videos, allowing a story to unfold throughout the entire album.

Church will kick off his international tour on Monday (Feb. 24) with a show in Dublin, Ireland. He'll play in the UK, Netherlands, Germany, Sweden and Norway, before kicking off a series of shows in the United States at the iHeart Country Radio Festival in Austin, Tex. on March 29. See all of his upcoming shows here.

Purchase 'The Outsiders' here.