
When Julianne Hough announced late last year she was stepping down from “Dancing with the Stars” to concentrate on her country music career, a friend of mine muttered, “Well, we’ll see.”
Well . . . now, we see.
Hough is challenging Taylor Swift for the Number One spot on the Billboard country album chart. Her “NBC Sounds of the Season: The Julianne Hough Holiday” jumped from No. 16 to 2 in one week, knocking Taylor’s debut album out of the second spot.
Not bad, considering the holidays are over.
At 20, Hough is already a show business veteran.
We first caught site of her, but did not realize who we were looking at, in 2001, when she had an uncredited bit part in “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.”
She went on to be one of the Million Dollar Dancers on “Show Me the Money” before joining the cast of “Dancing with the Stars” as one of the professional mentors.
Her self-titled debut album shot to Number One on the country chart and No. 3 in the Top 200 before dropping fairly quickly, possibly because she was too busy with “Dancing with the Stars” to promote the album as much as she needed.
So, she quit the program, adding she could be back in a year if the country gig doesn’t work.
According to Google, she attracts an average of 368,000 searches per month. That’s not quite in the superstar range – Taylor Swift attracts more than four million per month - but she may be getting there.