Recently, Casting Crowns hit another sales milestone with the Gold certification of its sophomore album Lifesong by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for shipments of more than 500,000 copies. Its RIAA Gold status comes after only 12 weeks of the August 30 release, making Lifesong the band's fastest-selling album to date. This follows the Platinum certification of its debut album in February, with career sales now more than 1.9 million.
Lifesong debuted at No. 9 on Billboard's Top 200 Albums chart, one of only two Christian artists to break the Top 10 on the Billboard chart in ten years.
This Gold certification caps off the band's phenomenal two-year career that has included four radio No. 1's, an RIAA Platinum debut album, and the release of the platinum-certified Live From Atlanta, its special two-disc live DVD/CD set.
Casting Crowns, originally formed as a youth ministry worship band, has sold more than 1.9 million albums, even while band members have remained active in youth ministry at local churches in the Atlanta area. The band was named this year's GMA "Group of the Year," and lead singer Mark Hall was named "GMA's Songwriter of the Year" for the second consecutive year as well as BMI's 2005 Songwriter of the Year. The band recently wrapped the 38-city fall leg of its highly-successful "Lifesong Tour," which sold out venues nationwide.
In 2004, Casting Crowns' debut album quickly earned the highest first-week sales of any debut artist on Nielsen SoundScan Christian market sales chart for the year, eventually selling more than 1 million units. The project's three radio singles, "If We Are The Body," "Who Am I," and "Voice of Truth" all spent multiple weeks at No. 1 on numerous charts, the third of which spent a record-breaking 13 weeks at No. 1. For the year 2004, Casting Crowns was the most played artist on all Christian radio formats combined, and performed to more than 1 million people in concert.
For more information, please visit www.CastingCrowns.com or www.reunionrecords.com.
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