Sturgill Simpson’s New Album Debuts Atop Billboard Country Chart

Sturgill Simpson has some big news to celebrate: His new album, A Sailor's Guide to Earth, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Country Albums chart.

In addition to Country Albums, Simpson scored the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Current Albums chart and the Billboard Current Digital Albums chart. He also placed at No. 3 on the all-genre Billboard 200, bested only by Prince, whose hits compilation and Purple Rain album soared to No. 1 and No 2, respectively, following his death on April 21. Both spots are career highs for Simpson.

A Sailor's Guide to Earth was released on April 15. The record features nine songs, including its first single, “Brace for Impact (Live a Little),” and a version of Nirvana's “In Bloom." Simpson produced the album himself, with David Ferguson and Sean Sullivan as engineers. The project was primarily recorded at the Butcher Shoppe in Nashville.

“… I wanted to express a lot of other influences that are outside of country music, that I think there’s a lot of room to explore, in certain terms of sonic templates in the genre,” Simpson explains of the album. “If there was any intentional approach, I wanted to reverse-engineer the songcraft. Country music especially can get very formulaic — you know, you have to have your verses and a bridge and a chorus, and a lot of the songs are written as just plain and simple poetry on the road. Then I decided I was going to frame those poems to music while in the studio.”

A Sailor’s Guide to Earth is available now, digitally, on CD and on vinyl.