Jelly Roll leads a wave of new artists to the top of the album chart

The Billboard Hot 100 has Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” at No. 1 for a 15th nonconsecutive week — only the sixth song ever to top the chart for that long. But while the singles chart stays mostly unchanged, the Billboard 200 albums chart has been flooded with high-profile new entries: Jelly Roll tops the chart for the first time with his supersized Beautifully Broken, while Rod Wave, GloRilla and BigXthaPlug all land in the top 10. And Charli XCX’s Brat surges on the strength of an accurately titled deluxe edition.

TOP ALBUMS

Last week’s Billboard 200 was headlined by Moon Music, the 10th album from that reliable purveyor of frictionless English pop, Coldplay. And, given how much of Moon Music’s chart success came from album sales — as opposed to online streaming and radio airplay — it seemed likely to post only the briefest of runs at No. 1.

A week later, that suspicion turned into reality, as Moon Music plunged from the top spot to No. 29. But instead of merely reverting to the pre-Coldplay reality, this week’s Billboard 200 is headlined by a flood of fresh titles, with four (!) debuts in the top 10 plus the return of an old favorite with a generous facelift.

Country singer Jelly Roll leads the pack with his first-ever No. 1 album, Beautifully Broken — the success of which feels like a victory lap following a years-long stretch of touring, collaborating with other artists, racking up chart hits and even testifying before Congress. It’s consistent with the singer’s hustle that Beautifully Broken was released in many variant forms, all of them engineered to boost first-week sales: There’s a 14-song version, a 22-song version (for digital download and streaming), a 27-song version (as a download from Jelly Roll’s webstore) and a most-deluxe-of-all 28-song version (again, for digital download and streaming). That’s not even getting into all the different versions on vinyl, CD and cassette.

As it turns out, Jelly Roll had enough competition to make the effort necessary. Rod Wave, who fuses hip-hop and soul, has now landed all seven of his albums in the top 10; the latest, Last Lap, debuts at No. 2, with the lion’s share coming from streaming rather than airplay or sales. (As previously discussed in this space, strong streaming numbers generally portend longer chart runs, because sales are only counted once, while streaming algorithms tend to feed people music they’ve already heard. Streaming also helped land 18 of Last Lap’s songs on the Hot 100 this week, which is a nice bonus.)

Charli XCX’s Brat surges from No. 14 to No. 3 — matching the peak it hit when the album initially debuted back in June — thanks to the release of its own deluxe edition, titled Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat. The album, which previously existed in both 15-song and 18-song forms (the latter titled Brat and it’s the same but there’s three more songs so it’s not), has now been blown out into a 35-song mega-album; the 17 extra songs consist of star-packed remixes featuring the likes of Lorde, Billie Eilish, Ariana Grande, Kesha and others. (Technically, there’s a 34-song version and a 35-song version, but we’re already so far into the weeds as it is.) All of those versions count as Brat as far as Billboard is concerned, so here we are.

That’s not even it for major movement on the Billboard 200, as two rappers enjoy their highest-ever chart debuts: GloRilla’s Glorious enters the chart at No. 5, while BigXthaPlug’s Take Care debuts at No. 8; the latter’s previous career chart peak came when Amar hit No. 97, so he’s clearly on the rise. (And, as with Rod Wave, both Glorious and Take Care are charting based primarily on streaming numbers.)

The rest of the top 10 consists of holdovers, all of which, thanks to the chart’s newcomers, lose ground this week: Sabrina Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet (from No. 2 to No. 4), Chappell Roan’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwestern Princess (from No. 3 to No. 6), Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft (from No. 5 to No. 7), Morgan Wallen’s One Thing at a Time (from No. 4 to No. 9) and Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department (from No. 6 to No. 10).

TOP SONGS

For the umpteenth week, there’s precious little movement on the Hot 100 singles chart. But Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” keeps occupying ever-more-rarefied air, as the track spends a whopping 15th week at No. 1 — a feat that puts it in the company of just five other songs, ever. It and Harry Styles’ “As It Was” have posted 15-week runs; Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night,” Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee’s “Despacito (feat. Justin Bieber)” and Mariah Carey & Boyz II Men’s “One Sweet Day” posted 16-week runs; and Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road (feat. Billy Ray Cyrus)” holds the record, with 19 weeks at No. 1 in 2019.

Back when “Old Town Road” was sitting at No. 1, the song most often stuck at No. 2 was Billie Eilish’s breakthrough single, “bad guy.” Five years later, the latest song to hold at No. 2 behind “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” — for a third straight week, in this case — is “Birds of a Feather” by … Billie Eilish.

For an eighth straight week, Sabrina Carpenter posts three songs in the top 10. “Espresso” climbs from No. 4 back to its chart peak at No. 3, “Taste” slips from No. 7 to No. 8 and “Please Please Please” dips from No. 9 to No. 10. Meanwhile, Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars’ “Die With a Smile” rises from No. 5 to No. 4 and Post Malone’s “I Had Some Help,” featuring Morgan Wallen, tumbles from No. 3 to No. 5.

Rounding out the top 10, Teddy Swims’ indomitable “Lose Control” climbs from No. 8 to No. 6 — that’s 40 weeks in the top 10, good for the fifth-longest such run in Billboard Hot 100 history — while Chappell Roan’s “Good Luck, Babe!” slips from No. 6 to No. 7. And, though Benson Boone is no doubt up at night thinking he just might lose it all, he can rest easy knowing that “Beautiful Things” climbs from No. 10 to No. 9 for what only feels like the song’s one millionth week on the chart.

WORTH NOTING

With Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” topping the Billboard Hot 100 for a 15th week, it’s time to start gaming out its chances of topping the all-time record — set, as noted above, back in 2019, with the 19-week run of Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road (feat. Billy Ray Cyrus).” Barring some as-yet-unannounced juggernaut, it’s within the realm of possibility that “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” could reign without a ton of major competition in the weeks to come.

Of course, there’s an essentially immovable obstacle in Shaboozey’s path, and she’s wearing a Santa hat. On the chart dated Dec. 2, 2023, last year’s biggest holiday singles (Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” and Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You”) re-entered the top 10 at No. 8 and No. 4, respectively, before gobbling up the two top spots for the duration of the holiday season. One can dream of other Christmas songs making a run at the top — please, for the love of Santa, let it be so — but one way or another, the Hot 100 is gonna look a lot like Christmas starting no later than Dec. 7 of this year.

That leaves five more installments of the Billboard Hot 100 between now — with Shaboozey having posted 15 weeks at No. 1 — and the time of year when the world decides that, of all the holiday songs in existence, we ought to reserve spots on the chart for ones recorded by Andy Williams and Perry Como. (Yes, they’ll chart again. No, I don’t make the rules, as evidenced by the fact that any of this is happening in the first place.)

So, let’s assume that the Mariah Carey Doomsday Clock strikes midnight to coincide with the chart dated Dec. 7, 2024. Let’s also assume that neither Billie Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather” nor some as-yet-unreleased sensation tops the chart between now and “All I Want for Christmas Is You” o’clock. And, finally, let’s assume that the world doesn’t suddenly reset its algorithms and abandon Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” en masse at any point in November 2024. That would give Shaboozey five more unobstructed weeks at the top — and 20 overall, which would break the all-time record.

If it happens, and you’d like a hint as to what might one day break Shaboozey’s (still-theoretical) 20-week record, consider this: “All I Want for Christmas Is You” has posted 14 very nonconsecutive weeks at No. 1 since its release in 1994. During the last holiday season, Christmas songs held the top spot on the Hot 100 for five weeks — three for Lee, two for Carey — before getting mothballed. If Carey were somehow able to run the table this time around, she’d hit 19 weeks early in January 2025. That’d put her in prime position to break the record in just a little more than a year.