NASHVILLE, Tenn. — (Wednesday, May 22, 2013) – Love Is Everything, the new album from MCA Nashville recording artist George Strait, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Top Country Albums Chart this week, selling 119,843 units in its first week. That also earned Strait the No. 2 position on the Billboard Top 200. The album contains the hit single “Give It All We Got Tonight,” which Mediabase named as the most played song on country radio this week, earning Strait an unprecedented 60th No. 1 song. Love Is Everythingis Strait’s 40th studio album.

“Since he began churning out country hits in 1981…Strait has cultivated a kind of stoic dependability unmatched among his peers. On Love Is Everything, his stirring new album…. [Strait’s] vocals feel newly vulnerable, particularly in ballads like ‘Blue Melodies’… and the gorgeous ‘I Just Can’t Go On Dying Like This,’ which Strait wrote back in the mid ’70s….He’s putting more of himself in the music, too….There’s the unusually vivid language in ‘That’s What Breaking Hearts Do,’ which Strait co-wrote with his son Bubba…. But neither of those cuts prepares you for ‘I Believe,’ another song by George and Bubba Strait (with Dean Dillon) that appears to be about the shooting last year at Sandy Hook Elementary School. ‘The night’s as clear as a big desert sky / But it’s hard to see stars with these tears in my eyes,” Strait sings over delicate acoustic fingerpicking, “Yeah, it’s hard not to cry / There’s 26 reasons why.’ ‘I Believe’ goes on to ponder ‘broken hearts that’ll never beat the same’ and ‘shattered lives still reeling from the pain,’ yet insists in a chorus swollen with strings that ‘there’s someone who’s looking after me.’ Carefully rendered and unabashed in its optimism, it’s as personal as anything Strait has ever recorded. And it’s completely devastating.  Three stars.” – Los Angeles Times