<\/p>\n
Luke Combs<\/a> has surpassed Garth Brooks<\/a> as the highest-certified country artist in history by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).<\/p>\n Combs has sold and streamed a combined 168 million units (units can be albums or singles), according to RIAA. Brooks stands at 162.5 million and had held the record for more than 20 years.<\/p>\n More from Billboard<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cWhen my team first told me about this, my initial reaction was, \u2018Are you sure? There\u2019s no way.\u2019 It was only 8 years ago that I got my first [RIAA] plaque for \u2018Hurricane\u2019 going gold,\u201d Combs said in a statement. \u201cI knew then, without a doubt, I had the best fans in the world. The song had gone platinum before they could even give me the gold plaque. I\u2019m super humbled by the fans\u2019 belief in me and support of my music today and over the years. I know this does not happen without them. This achievement is more so theirs than it is mine. All I ever hoped and dreamed of from the beginning of this crazy ride was to make music that made people feel something and I can\u2019t wait to continue making country music for the rest of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n Combs already held the record for the most Diamond-certified singles for a country artist with four. Diamond-certified singles have sold\/streamed 10 million units, and Combs\u2019 four to surpass that tally are \u201cBeautiful Crazy,\u201d \u201cWhen It Rains It Pours,\u201d \u201cHurricane\u201d and \u201cShe Got the Best of Me.\u201d<\/p>\n The news comes as Combs\u2019 current single, \u201cBack in the Saddle,\u201d climbs to No. 8 on Billboard<\/em>\u2019s Country Airplay chart. On Friday, Combs released The Prequel<\/em>, a three-song set with \u201cMy Kinda Saturday Night,\u201d \u201c15 Minutes\u201d and \u201cDays Like These\u201d via Sony Music Nashville.<\/p>\n It\u2019s already been a stellar year for Combs, who is up for three awards at November\u2019s CMA Awards, including entertainer of the year, and recently announced that he and wife Nicole are expecting their third child. After his extensive worldwide tour in 2024, Combs has concentrated on playing festivals this year and is the first country artist to headline both Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza. Later this month, he will headline the Austin City Limits Music Festival.<\/p>\n Drake <\/a>is the RIAA\u2019s highest-certified artist across all genres, with 298.5 units sold and streamed, followed by Taylor Swift<\/a> at 242.5 million units. Combs now stands at ninth among all artists.<\/p>\n Best of Billboard<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for Billboard’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Luke Combs has surpassed Garth Brooks as the highest-certified country artist in history by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Combs has sold and streamed a combined 168 million units (units can be albums or singles), according to RIAA. Brooks stands at 162.5 million and had held the record for more than 20 years. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2072370,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[29110,308175,323283,377138,367122],"class_list":["post-2072369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-billboard","tag-country-artist","tag-luke-combs","tag-recording-industry-association-of-america","tag-riaa"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/\u2018My-Initial-Reaction-Was-\u2018Are-You-Sure.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2072369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2072369"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2072369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2072371,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2072369\/revisions\/2072371"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2072370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2072369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2072369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2072369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}