Lady Gaga’s ‘Chromatica’ Tops Album Chart, as Jimmy Buffett Has Surprise Second-Place Finish

Chris Willman
·3 min read

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After weeks and months in which new hip-hop releases have almost constantly dominated the top spots on the album chart, pop finally got a word back in edge-wise, as Lady Gaga’s “Chromatica” came in at No. 1.

Although it was far from a photo finish, Jimmy Buffett also landed a surprising second place finish on the Rolling Stone album chart with a strong bow for his new album, “Life on the Flip Side.”

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“Chromatica” came out of the box with 280,800 album units. That broke down to 204,800 full-album sales, 43,000 sales of individual songs and 76.5 million song streams.

That 280K figure easily counts as one of the year’s top bows to date, although the mark set by the Weeknd’s 400K-plus opening week looks to stay safe as a high watermark well into 2020.

Buffett’s “Life on the Flip Side,” his first non-holiday album since 2013, accumulated 74,100 album units to come in at No. 2. The vast majority of what went into that figure was full-album sales (72,900), as his song streams were, on a comparative level, minimal (1.2 million).

In the cases of both Gaga and Buffett, ticket and/or merch bundles helped contribute to the album sales figures, even if those dates end up getting postponed. Gaga still has three European stadium dates booked for July and four in North America set for August, although few realistically foresee those concerts continuing as scheduled.

Run the Jewels’ “RTJ4” was the other top 10 entry, coming in at No. 9 with 37,200 album units. Album sales were 29,900 and song streams were 9.6 million. Those numbers might have been higher if Run the Jewels had not made the unusual decision, in the middle of the Black Lives Matters protest, to give away digital copies of the full record as part of a name-your-own-price release.

The rest of the top 10 albums consisted of Lil Baby, Gunna (last week’s leader), Future, Drake, Polo G and DaBaby at Nos. 3-8, and a new entry from Anuel AA (“Emmanuel”) bowing at No. 10. Further down, Lil Yachty debuted at No. 13 and Kygo at No. 15. Diplo’s so-called country album came in at No. 26.

On the Rolling Stone songs chart, “Rockstar” by DaBaby featuring Roddy Ricch made a return to No. 1, followed again by Megan Thee Stallion’s “Savage” in second place. Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande’s “Rain on Me” fell from first to third in its second week.

The top new entry on the songs chart was “Sour Candy” by Lady Gaga and Blackpink at No. 16.

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