This week, two old standbys — Morgan Wallen's I'm the Problem and Alex Warren's "Ordinary" — top the Billboard albums and singles charts, respectively. But there are still milestones to be found, as four new albums (by Gunna, MGK, Jonas Brothers and Babymetal) debut in the top 10. Then there's the continued success of the KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack, which this week places three songs in the Hot 100's top 10 simultaneously.
TOP ALBUMS
This week's Billboard 200 albums chart follows a familiar pattern: Morgan Wallen's I'm the Problem and the soundtrack to KPop Demon Hunters sit at No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, while fresh debuts help crowd last week's debuts out of the top 10. Gone are recent albums from $uicideboy$, Reneé Rapp and Yeat, as well as Sabrina Carpenter's Short n' Sweet, which takes a more modest dip to No. 13.
In their place are four of the latest debuts, most of which look primed to be short-timers in their own right. At No. 3, Gunna's The Last Wun would seem to be in the best position to stick around for a bit, given that most of its numbers are derived from streaming. But it's followed by three titles that benefit enormously from physical sales — which, as always, tend to be front-loaded toward a title's first seven days and don't carry over from week to week where the charts are concerned.
First up, MGK — that's the artist sometimes known as Machine Gun Kelly — debuts at No. 4 with his new album Lost Americana. At No. 6, Jonas Brothers return to the top 10 with Greetings from Your Hometown, though the album's sales-heavy numbers are boosted by an absurd number of variant editions, vinyl, deluxe versions with bonus tracks and so on. (There are, in fact, more than 50 CD variants — enough, in fact, that it's hard to imagine even the most degenerate Jonas diehards bothering to collect them all.)
Then comes the latest album by the Japanese band Babymetal. The group — which fuses sugary pop and, well, metal — has been releasing albums for more than a decade. But it's never cracked the top 10 until this week, as Metal Forth debuts at No. 9. The vast majority of its numbers are derived from sales, with a set of variant editions to give even those of the aforementioned Jonases a run for their money: 15 vinyl variants, six CD editions, three cassette editions and so on. It would be a shocking upset if Metal Forth is still sniffing the chart's upper regions next week, but a top 10 hit is a top 10 hit.
Incidentally, three notable — and decidedly different — debuts pop up just below the top 10: The rapper JID bows at No. 11 with God Does Like Ugly, the country singer Bailey Zimmerman kicks off a new chart run at No. 12 with Different Night Same Rodeo and Ethel Cain enters the Billboard 200 at No. 14 with Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You.
Finally, it's worth noting that KPop Demon Hunters continues to close the gap on I'm the Problem. Both are blockbusters on streaming, but while Wallen's album is fading ever-so-incrementally, KPop Demon Hunters has experienced gains every week — based on the chart metric known as "equivalent album units" — since its debut eight weeks ago. (That's exceedingly rare on the Billboard 200 in the streaming era.)
KPop Demon Hunters will almost certainly experience a boost from the release of physical editions this fall. The question is whether it can fend off the competition long enough to hit No. 1 before every life form on earth gets crushed under the heel of Taylor Swift's The Life of a Showgirl shortly after its scheduled release in October.
TOP SONGS
Speaking of KPop Demon Hunters, HUNTR/X's "Golden" finally hit No. 1 last week, thanks to robust streaming numbers and a much-needed surge of radio airplay. That left Alex Warren's "Ordinary" sitting, bereft, at No. 2 after nine nonconsecutive weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100. This week, "Ordinary" and its hardworking choir exact their cloying revenge, as they return to No. 1, fueled in part by a fresh live recording from Lollapalooza featuring country star Luke Combs.
Giving "Ordinary" a country makeover was a smart move, given how long major country hits can sit in heavy rotation; just ask Shaboozey and Morgan Wallen, whose songs have been mainstays in the top 10 for ages now. Heck, Shaboozey's "A Bar Song (Tipsy)" is still milling around in the top 10 in its 70th week on the chart, more than a year after it began its record-tying 19-week run at No. 1. If "Ordinary" remains in the top 10 at this time next year, don't say you haven't been warned.
That said, the KPop Demon Hunters juggernaut hasn't lost an iota of steam; though it couldn't compete with the Combs-fueled surge for "Ordinary," "Golden" still posts significant gains as it falls to No. 2. Its already-robust streaming numbers are up 4%, while its airplay numbers — the biggest drag on its efforts to compete with "Ordinary" — climb 38% over last week. These songs are going to be neck-and-neck for a long time to come.
That's not the only gain posted by KPop Demon Hunters where the Hot 100 is concerned. The album was already one of the biggest soundtracks to come along in years, joining the rarefied chart air of such recent blockbusters as Wicked, Barbie and Encanto. But this week, it posts a milestone none of those phenomena could achieve: For the first time in its chart run, KPop Demon Hunters posts three songs in the top 10 simultaneously. Not only does HUNTR/X sit at No. 2 with "Golden," but HUNTR/X's onscreen rivals in Saja Boys — five of the demons to which the film's title alludes — now have two songs in the top 10: "Your Idol" and "Soda Pop."
It used to be common for movie soundtracks to land multiple songs in the top 10: Purple Rain, Footloose, The Bodyguard and countless others have pulled it off over the years. More recently, Encanto and Barbie came close. But in Hot 100 history, dating back to 1958, only three soundtracks have landed three top 10 hits simultaneously: Saturday Night Fever, Waiting to Exhale and now KPop Demon Hunters.
Who knows? It's within the realm of possibility that HUNTR/X's "How It's Done" could eventually soon join its brethren in the top 10. This week, it climbs from No. 19 to No. 14, with three more K-pop bangers from the movie trailing not too far behind.
WORTH NOTING
This isn't as flashy a milestone as three simultaneous top 10 hits, but it's worth noting. SZA's album SOS has been a chart mainstay since its release near the end of 2022 — a run bolstered by the release of a supersized deluxe edition two years later. This week, SOS spends its 100th week in the top 10; in chart history, that number is exceeded by only two other albums (excluding soundtracks and cast recordings).
SOS is the first album by a woman to accomplish the feat, but we can get even more specific than that: It's the first (not-a-soundtrack, not-a-cast-recording) album by an artist other than Morgan Wallen to spend 100 or more weeks in the top 10. Wallen has made it happen twice, with 2021's Dangerous: The Double Album (165 weeks) and One Thing at a Time (121 weeks).
One thing all three albums have in common, besides recency and ongoing success? They are looooooong, which does help goose an album's stats in the streaming era. Though some deluxe versions run a hair longer, Dangerous is generally understood to contain 30 songs, while One Thing at a Time has 36. (Don't be surprised if I'm the Problem, with its 37 tracks, joins the 100-week club sometime in 2027.) In its current form, SOS Deluxe: LANA spans an incredible 42 tracks.
As for the all-time record for most weeks in the top 10, the 1956 original cast recording of My Fair Lady spent 173 weeks there — including stops at No. 1 in 1956, 1957, 1958 and 1959. Not even Morgan Wallen has (yet) been able to land the same album at No. 1 in four consecutive years.
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