Billboard 200: Ariana Grande spends 2nd week at #1, Kacey Musgraves outdoes herself, Justin Timberlake disappoints

Daniel Montgomery
·2 min read
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It was a competitive week on the Billboard 200 albums chart for the tracking week that ended March 21, but it wasn’t the battle for the top spot we anticipated. While our racetrack odds projected a close race for number-one between Ariana Grande (“Eternal Sunshine“) and Justin Timberlake (“Everything I Thought It Was”), it actually turned out to be a fight between Grande and Kacey Musgraves (“Deeper Well“), with only 3,500 album units making the difference between first and second place. Read all about this week’s chart here at Billboard.com.

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“Eternal Sunshine” achieved its second week in the top spot with 100,500 equivalent album units based on its combined record sales, individual track sales and online streaming performance. “Deeper Well” was right behind with 97,000 units, which is the highest total of Musgraves’s career. Third place actually went to Morgan Wallen‘s “One Thing at a Time,” which was up from week to week with 70,000 units despite spending more than a year on the chart already. That left “Everything I Thought It Was” stuck at number-four with 67,000 units. That’s a far cry from Timberlake’s past totals; his last album, “Man of the Woods,” launched with 293,000 units six years ago. Noah Kahan’s “Stick Sesson” rounded out the top five with 46,000 units.

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In our weekly Billboard 200 predictions contest, our game players were split almost right down the middle between “Eternal Sunshine” and “Everything I Thought It Was” for the top spot, with 59 correctly picking “Sunshine” over 57 who picked “Everything.” Only six people expected that “Deeper Well” would be number-two; most thought it would debut at number-three like Musgraves’s last album, “Star-Crossed.” Five people were right that “One Thing at a Time” would be in third position. Literally no one anticipated “Everything” would start as low as number-four. But most users correctly placed “Stick Season” at number-five. Ultimately four people who placed their bets in our predictions center tied for the best predictions score with three out of six questions answered correctly. How did you do? Find out here.

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