Drake’s New Single Tops Songs Chart; Taylor Swift’s ‘Folklore’ Is No. 1 Album for Fourth Week

Chris Willman
·3 min read

While there was no movement atop the album chart this week, with Taylor Swift commanding it for the fourth week in a row, the songs chart saw some serious new action with the No. 1 debut of a new Drake song, “Laugh Now Cry Later,” that fronts what is expected to be a coming album release.

“Laugh Now Cry Later,” which has Lil Durk as a featured guest, bowed atop the Rolling Stone songs chart with 52.4 million streams. It had 444,400 song units, pusing it ahead of the No. 2 tune, Cardi B and Meghan Thee Stallion’s “WAP,” which had 420,600 song units and 48.2 million stream in its second week.

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Country songs rarely make it anywhere near the top of the songs chart, given the streaming dominance of hip-hop as a genre. But there was an exception this week, as a new single from the fastest rising young star in country, Morgan Wallen, debuted at a mighty No. 3. His “7 Summers” had 21 million streams in its premiere week and 199,100 song units.

Miley Cyrus’ latest song, “Midnight Sky,” debuted at No. 8 with 10 million streams.

On the Rolling Stone album chart, Swift’s “Folklore” repeated at No. 1 with 93,000 album units, making her the first non-hip-hop artist this year to spend four weeks on top. Although her album units tally is down from 133,300 the week before, the continued resilience of “Folklore” in week four was due at least in small part to Swift making a bonus track, “The Lakes,” available for individual streaming and download; it had previously only been available as an inclusion on a deluxe edition of the full album.

(There was also the fact that Swift had autographed copies of the “Folklore” CD sent to independent record shops, as a traffic-generating sign of good will. Her team has not revealed how many copies of the disc she signed and had shipped — many stores reported getting a box of 30, all of which quickly sold out — but it most likely amounted to a fraction of the 38,100 full-album sales she accrued during the week.)

Posthumous releases from Pop Smoke and Juice WRLD again landed in the No. 2 and 3 slots, with 81,300 and 75,900 album units, respectively.

The top debuting album was Young Dolph’s “Rich Slave,” in at No. 4 with 65,000 album units. The only other album premiering in the top 20 was country star Kane Brown’s “Mixtape, Vol. 1” EP, debuting at No. 14 with 22,500 album units.

The enduring “Hamilton” cast album held onto its No. 5 slot on the album chart with another 55,100 album units.

 

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