Chart history
Shawn Colvin and Steve Earle were number one for four consecutive weeks with their collaborative project Colvin & Earle .
These are the Official Charts Company's UK Country Albums Chart number ones of 2016. The chart week runs from Friday to Thursday with the chart-date given as the following Thursday. Chart positions are based the multi-metric consumption of country music in the United Kingdom, blending traditional album sales, track equivalent albums, and streaming equivalent albums. The chart contains 20 positions.
In the iteration of the chart dated 1 January, Brave , the debut album by British duo The Shires, spent it's thirty fifth total week at number one, and was briefly displaced by Rhiannon Giddens' Tomorrow Is My Turn (which reached the summit after eighteen weeks on the chart), before returning to the top spot for another two weeks. Later in the year, The Shires released their second album My Universe , which spent eleven consecutive weeks at number one. Beginning on 12th February, Chris Isaak debuted with First Comes the Night , which went on to hold the top spot for four weeks until it was replaced by country legend Loretta Lynn and her album Full Circle , becoming her second album to hit number one in the UK and her final number one before her death in 2022. Chris Stapleton's first album Traveller premiered on the chart in mid-March and would go on to spend four nonconsecutive weeks at the top. On 11 May, 80s pop star Cyndi Lauper achieved her first country number one with Detour , a collection of country music covers that inspired her as a child. Colvin & Earle , a collaborative project by Shawn Colvin and Steve Earle spent four weeks at number one, becoming Colvin's first number one country album and Earle's ninth. Following this, Ward Thomas' debut record From Where We Stand returned to the chart peak for two weeks, and their second album Cartwheels spent five non-consecutive weeks at number one and became the first British country album to reach the top spot on the all genre UK Albums Chart. Other artists who spent multiple weeks at number one include Lucinda Williams, Steven Tyler, and The Cadillac Three, which each spent two weeks, and Dolly Parton, who spent three weeks with Pure & Simple . The final number one of the year was Cartwheels.
| Weeks at number one | Artist |
|---|---|
| 15 | The Shires |
| 7 | Ward Thomas |
| 4 | Chris Isaak |
| Chris Stapleton | |
| Shawn Colvin & Steve Earle | |
| 3 | Dolly Parton |
| 3 | Lucinda Williams |
| Steven Tyler | |
| 2 | The Cadillac Three |
Shawn Colvin is an American singer-songwriter. While she has been a solo recording artist for decades, she is best known for her 1997 Grammy Award-winning song "Sunny Came Home".
Ward Thomas are an English modern country-pop duo, composed of twin sisters Catherine and Lizzy Ward Thomas from Hampshire. The band has been called "Britain's first country stars". Cartwheels, their second studio album, became the first album by a UK country act to reach number one on the UK Albums Chart. surpassing the previous record by the Shires. It has since gone gold in the UK.