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After nearly four months, Shaboozey's run atop the pop chart is interrupted
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Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” sat at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for 15 weeks, but that run has been interrupted by Morgan Wallen’s “Love Somebody,” which enters this week’s chart at the top spot. The albums chart has its fair share of action, too, as rapper Yeat enters at No. 1, the K-pop group SEVENTEEN debuts in the top five, and last week’s four biggest debuts all stick around in the top 10 for a second week.
TOP ALBUMS
For albums that debut in the Billboard top 10, there are usually two distinct trajectories: You’ve got your immovable objects (Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter) who debut at the top and barely budge for months, and you’ve got your supernovas (Coldplay, for example) who debut at or near the top, only to plummet speedily into oblivion. In the streaming era, the Billboard 200 is pretty unforgiving that way.
If you looked at last week’s chart, with its four debuts — Jelly Roll’s Beautifully Broken at No. 1, Rod Wave’s Last Lap at No. 2, GloRilla’s Glorious at No. 5 and BigXthaPlug’s Take Care at No. 8 — you’d be forgiven if you thought at least one or two of them were in for precipitous second-week declines. You’d also be wrong: Each of the four slides just two spots (Jelly Roll from No. 1 to No. 3, Rod Wave from No. 2 to No. 4, GloRilla from No. 5 to No. 7 and BigXthaPlug from No. 8 to No. 10).
This week’s debuts are led by the rapper Yeat, who enters this week’s chart at No. 1 with Lyfestyle; it’s his first time topping the Billboard 200, though his four previous albums all landed in the top 10. It won’t be an easy feat to maintain in upcoming weeks, given that roughly two-thirds of Lyfestyle’s current chart success is derived from album sales — including many variant editions made available through the rapper’s webstore — rather than streaming, which is what fuels long-term chart success these days. Still, it’s an impressive feat for an ascending artist.
Speaking of rising stars, the all-caps K-pop group SEVENTEEN debuts at No. 5 with SPILL THE FEELS — its sixth consecutive record to chart in the top 10 — while Gracie Abrams zooms back into the top 10 after a one-week stay at No. 2 back in July. Abrams’ The Secret of Us has rattled around in the charts’ upper regions ever since, but it surges from No. 19 to No. 8 this week thanks to the release of a deluxe edition with a batch of unreleased songs.
Rounding out the top 10, Sabrina Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet climbs from No. 4 to No. 2, Morgan Wallen’s One Thing at a Time surges from No. 9 to No. 6 and Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft dips from No. 7 to No. 9. And three of 2024’s biggest pop-music stories — Charli XCX’s Brat, Chappell Roan’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess and Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department — all slide out of the top 10 simultaneously, albeit just barely. Any or all could certainly surge in the coming weeks, as Grammy nominations are announced Nov. 8 and Swift drops another deluxe edition of Tortured Poets on Nov. 29. Nevertheless, it’s been ages since we’ve seen a top 10 without Roan or Swift.
TOP SONGS
Last week in this space, many paragraphs were spilled gaming out Shaboozey’s path to a record-setting run at No. 1. “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” had been on top for 15 nonconsecutive weeks, placing the all-time record — set in 2019 by Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road,” featuring Billy Ray Cyrus, which topped the Hot 100 for 19 weeks — well within its sights.
This week, Shaboozey seemed destined to tie the longest run of the 2020s, set last year by Morgan Wallen’s 16-week chart-topper “Last Night.” But this time around, Shaboozey has been surpassed by … Morgan Wallen, whose new song “Love Somebody” enters the chart at No. 1. Given the longevity of two past Wallen hits — his Post Malone collaboration “I Had Some Help” dips from No. 5 to No. 6 this week after topping the chart for six weeks at the beginning of this summer — it may be an uphill battle for Shaboozey to reclaim the throne. But “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” is nothing if not sturdy, and it’s still lying in wait at No. 2.
Morgan Wallen isn’t the only artist to debut in this week’s top 10. ROSÉ and Bruno Mars also make an auspicious chart entry, as the staggeringly catchy “APT.” bows at No. 8. Mars has been a top 10 mainstay for ages — and his duet with Lady Gaga, “Die With a Smile,” holds steady at No. 4 this week — but ROSÉ, who’s best known as a member of BLACKPINK, has become the first-ever female K-pop artist to land in the Billboard top 10. (A handful of male K-pop artists have done it: BTS, of course, along with solo efforts by members Jung Kook and Jimin, plus Psy.)
Billie Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather” dips from No. 2 to No. 3, while Sabrina Carpenter only has two songs in the top 10 rather than her usual three: “Espresso” slides from No. 3 to No. 5 and “Taste” drops from No. 8 to No. 9, but “Please Please Please” is left on the outside looking in at No. 12.
Two unkillable songs round out the top 10: Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control” dips a spot from No. 6 to No. 7, as it ties two other songs — Wallen’s “Last Night” and Dua Lipa’s “Levitating” — for the third-longest all-time run in the Billboard top 10, with 41 weeks. And Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things” drops from No. 9 to No. 10.
WORTH NOTING
As noted above, the streaming-era Billboard charts are marked by a mix of the venerable and the ephemeral. One advantage of the new system — and in particular its fickle nature — is that it offers a snapshot of fan sentiment in the moment, in ways that charting album sales alone couldn’t do nearly as effectively.
After former One Direction member Liam Payne died on Oct. 16, one way fans mourned was to stream the One Direction catalog, as evidenced by this week’s Billboard 200. All five 1D studio albums re-enter the chart this week: FOUR at No. 31, Midnight Memories at No. 38, Made in the A.M. at No. 62, Up All Night at No. 88 and Take Me Home at No. 103. No doubt aided by the way streaming algorithms work, the 1D surge even extended to Payne’s former bandmate Harry Styles, whose 2022 blockbuster Harry’s House re-enters the chart at No. 192.
The charts are also a useful metric for measuring fan anticipation. Tyler, The Creator’s new album Chromakopia dropped Monday, so it hasn’t yet registered its presence on the Billboard charts, though the single “Noid” bows on this week’s Hot 100 at No. 43. Still, Tyler’s catalog has already begun surging: IGOR leaps from No. 91 to No. 39, Flower Boy climbs from No. 127 to No. 92 and Call Me If You Get Lost re-enters the chart at No. 100. Even with the unusual Monday release date, expect a big chart debut for Chromakopia next week.
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