Scotty McCreery is back at the top of the charts…
The 25-year-old part-Puerto Rican country singer and former American Idol champion has notched his second No. 1 on Billboard‘s Country Airplay chart, as “This Is It” ascends 2-1 in its 37th week on the chart dated February 16.
The ballad increased by 8 percent to 39.6 million audience impressions in the week ending February 10, according to Nielsen Music.
On the airplay-, streaming- and sales-blended Hot Country Songschart, it enters the top five (6-4).
McCreery co-authored the song, with Frank Rogersand Aaron Eshuis, for his then-longtime girlfriend Gabi Dugal, and sang it at their wedding last June 16.
“Two weeks before I proposed, we wrote ‘This Is It’ as a love song for Gabi,” McCreery tells Billboard. “It’s our story. If the song existed solely for she and I, that would be completely fine with me. But to have our story on the radio and then reach No. 1 on the Billboard chart just makes my heart sing. Gabi is my world, she inspires me every day, and I think people can feel the realness of our love story when they listen to the song and watch the video. The fact that so many couples are now using ‘This’ in their own weddings gives me chills.”
McCreery, who won American Idol in 2011, earns his second Country Airplay leader in a row from his album Seasons Change, which became his third Top Country AlbumsNo. 1 in March 2018. He notched his first Country Airplay No. 1 with the album’s first single, “Five More Minutes,” which led for a week the same month.