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The ‘song of the summer’ sweepstakes are a tie, at least for now
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It’s an uneventful week atop the pop charts, but there’s still news worth noting, as Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department holds on at No. 1 for a 15th nonconsecutive week, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West takes a tumble and Chappell Roan hits a new chart peak. Over on the Hot 100 songs chart, Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” extends its run at No. 1 for a sixth nonconsecutive week, tying the other song of the summer (that’d be Post Malone’s “I Had Some Help,” featuring Morgan Wallen) for most weeks atop the chart in 2024.
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Last week, Taylor Swift pulled out all the stops to keep The Tortured Poets Department at No. 1 for a 14th week — which blocked her longtime nemesis, rapper Ye, from topping the chart with Vultures 2, his album with Ty Dolla $ign. Her efforts included the release of several discount-priced digital variant editions of TTPD, each of which contained a different bonus track. That labor-intensive bit of grade-grubbing paid off, as Vultures 2 entered last week’s chart outside the top spot, at No. 2.
This week, Vultures 2 presented no particular threat to Swift’s throne — it plunged from No. 2 to No. 19 — but Swift wasn’t done working the system, as she released another digital variant edition of TTPD late in the week. The effect on her sales numbers wasn’t as dramatic, but she prevailed regardless, extending her run at No. 1 to a 15th nonconsecutive week. For those seeking a historical analog for the album’s success, that 15-week run is now tied for third all-time among albums by women artists, joining Carole King’s 1971 mega-blockbuster Tapestry.
Climbing from No. 3 to Ye’s vacated No. 2 spot: Chappell Roan’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, which benefited from yet another viral live performance, this time at Outside Lands festival in San Francisco. It’s yet another new peak for Roan, whose 10-week run in the Top 10 has been marked by slow, steady growth.
Speaking of the Top 10, it’s full of albums that make incremental climbs thanks to the speedy decline of Vultures 2. Morgan Wallen’s One Thing at a Time jumps from No. 4 to No. 3, while his 2021 album Dangerous: The Double Album holds steady at No. 8, and Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft rises from No. 5 to No. 4. Like Wallen, Zach Bryan now has two albums in the Top 10: The Great American Bar Scene jumps from No. 7 to No. 5 and his self-titled 2023 album lands at No. 10 after sitting at No. 12 last week. Rounding out the Top 10, Charli XCX’s Brat holds at No. 6, Noah Kahan’s Stick Season climbs from No. 9 to No. 7, and the Twisters soundtrack is proving durable, as it rises from No. 10 to No. 9.
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Over on the Billboard Hot 100, there’s precious little action near the top, but one solid milestone.
If you’re one of those people who think there can only be one “song of the summer,” and that the Hot 100 provides a clear-cut metric for determining a winner, then this year’s race is a statistical dead heat: Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” sits at No. 1 for a sixth nonconsecutive week, while Post Malone’s “I Had Some Help,” which features Morgan Wallen, has also topped the chart for six weeks this year. (The latter song has been lodged at No. 2 for the past five weeks.) Of course, if you’re looking for a tiebreaker, Billboard maintains a separate chart called Songs of the Summer, and “I Had Some Help” has been sitting at No. 1 there for 12 weeks out of a possible 12.
Those aren’t the only tracks to hold on to their place in the Hot 100’s upper regions: Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” holds at No. 3 and Sabrina Carpenter’s resilient “Espresso” once again lands at No. 4. But the No. 5 spot belongs to an actual climber: Buoyed by her performance during NBC’s coverage of the Olympics’ closing ceremony, Billie Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather” jumps from No. 7 to become Eilish’s fourth song in her career to hit the top five. (It joins 2019’s “Bad Guy,” 2020’s “Therefore I Am” and this year’s “Lunch.”)
Familiar faces — and, more to the point, familiar songs — round out the Top 10. Tommy Richman’s “Million Dollar Baby” dips from No. 5 to No. 6, Chappell Roan’s “Good Luck, Babe!” drops from No. 6 to No. 7, and the 8-9-10 stretch finds three songs holding exactly where they were last week: Those would be Sabrina Carpenter’s “Please Please Please,” Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control” and Hozier’s “Too Sweet,” respectively.
WORTH NOTING
It’s been a rough few weeks for two of hip-hop’s rising stars. First, Ice Spice — a four-time Grammy nominee who was up for best new artist earlier this year — saw her debut album Y2K! register a No. 18 debut just a few weeks ago, only to plunge off the Billboard 200 entirely in the days since. And now Latto, who was up for best new artist last year, is experiencing a similarly soft chart entry with her new album Sugar Honey Iced Tea, which enters this week’s chart at No. 15.
It’s a sobering reminder of just how crowded the Billboard 200 really is these days. Billboard used to segregate catalog titles from new releases, but now its primary albums chart is loaded with records from years or even decades earlier; scan this week’s top 50 titles and you’ll find Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 classic Rumours (No. 32 and rising), five of the albums Taylor Swift released prior to The Tortured Poets Department, and greatest-hits collections by Creedence Clearwater Revival, Elton John and Eminem.
Throw in the scarcity of spots on commercial radio playlists, countless genres competing for attention, decentralized media, and streaming algorithms that feed people music they already like, and you can imagine how tough it must be for artists to attract interest — to say nothing of maintaining it.
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