The new Billboard 200 album chart has an unusual amount of fresh blood, with debuting releases accounting for five of the top 10 titles — starting with “Jackboys 2,” from Travis Scott and his Jackboys collective, getting off to a robust start in the No. 1 spot, followed by Justin Bieber‘s first album in more than four years, “Swag,” bowing in second place.
The Travis Scott project came in with 232,000 equivalent album units, with Bieber chalking up 163,000 units at No. 2. The other top 10 bows were the reconstituted rap act Clipse’s “Let God Sort Em Out” at No. 4, with 118,000 units; K-Pop group Twice’s “This Is For” at No. 6, with 80,000 units; and Giveon’s “Beloved” at No. 8, with 44,000.
The data for the top 10 comes from Luminate, as first reported by Billboard.
The top two albums for the week feel like they should come with asterisks attached, and footnotes to explain the extremely different paths they took to the top (or near-top) — one weighted heavily toward sales, and the other dependent almost exclusively on streaming.
“Jackboys 2,” the second release from the Cactus Jack label, includes songs from Scott and his rap collective — consisting of members Don Toliver, Sheck Wes, Chase B, SoFaygo, Wallie the Sensei and Luxury Tax 50. The album’s success was largely sales-driven, as its 232,000 equivalent album units included 160,000 copies sold as pure album sales, thanks in part to a large number of variants being put on sale. Billboard reports that the album was released as both a seven-song EP (including five different vinyl editions up for sale on the artist’s webstore) and a 17-track expanded edition (which had five variants of its own, including a CD, on top of the usual digital release) — before a 20-song version went up for grabs at the end of the week. While “Jackboys 2” was a sales monster, it was only the fourth-biggest streaming album of the week, with 94.86 million on-demand streams.
(One additional asterisk: The tallies for “Jackboys 2” would have been even bigger if it had gone on sale on Friday, like almost all other releases, but it came out on a Sunday, so only five days of consumption were measured for the week.)
Meanwhile, Bieber’s “Swag” bowed with 163,000 equivalent album units — but almost none of those came from actual album sales, since it was a late-breaking surprise release with no physical product in the marketplace at all, and no vinyl expected to be out for months to come. Only 6,000 of those 163,000 “Swag” units were comprised of sales, all of them digital downloads. Yet Bieber still had a potent debut, thanks to his biggest streaming week ever, with 198.77 million on-demand official streams, led by the track “Daisies” becoming the top song on streamers like Spotify and Apple Music. Perhaps needless to say, with all that consumption, “Swag” did land at No. 1 on the streaming chart.
Wherefore art thou, Morgan Wallen? The seemingly unstoppable run of “I’m the Problem” at the top of the Billboard 200 finally came to an end — for now. After eight weeks at No. 1, his blockbuster fell to No. 3 in its ninth week out. But at 147,000 units for the week, it was suffering only a 3% decline from the previous week, marking it as a likely bet to return to No. 1 soon.
(The Wallen album probably won’t be moving back to the top spot right away, however, as Tyler, the Creator’s Monday release is expected to assume that slot, even with only four days of activity in store for it.)
Among holdovers, the “KPop Demon Hunters” soundtrack got pushed down to No. 4, even though it’s still on the rise in consumption, registering a 10,000-unit increase to 85,000 for the week.
Ateez reentered the chart at No. 7 with “Golden Hour: Part 3” following the release of a deluxe edition, racking up 79,000 equivalent album units for the week and giving K-pop three spots in the top 10.
Closing out the top 10 were Wallen’s previous blockbuster, “One Thing at a Time,” at No. 9, and SZA’s “SOS” at No. 10.
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