U2’s ‘Songs of Surrender’ Starts at No. 1 on Top Album Sales Chart

Keith Caulfield
·4 min read
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U2’s Songs of Surrender debuts at No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart (dated April 1), selling 42,000 copies in the United States in the week ending March 23, according to Luminate.

The retrospective covers album – which see U2 reinterpreting its own catalog of songs – also arrives at No. 1 on Top Rock & Alternative Albums, Top Rock Albums, Top Alternative Albums, Vinyl Albums and Top Current Album Sales. It also bows at No. 5 on the Billboard 200. (On the latter list, U2 becomes only the fourth group to have a new top 10 album in every decade from the 1980s onwards.)

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Notably, of the set’s first-week sales, vinyl accounted for 19,500 copies sold. That marks U2’s biggest sales week on vinyl since Luminate began electronically tracking music sales in 1991.

Songs of Surrender’s is available in multiple configurations, including a standard 16-track version, a 20-track deluxe and a 40-track super deluxe (with the latter divided into four 10-track chapters named after each band member: Bono, Adam Clayton, The Edge and Larry Mullen Jr.). Sales were also helped by a dozen vinyl variants of the album, including exclusive editions sold by Amazon, Target and independent music stores.

Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart ranks the top-selling albums of the week based only on traditional album sales. The chart’s history dates back to May 25, 1991, the first week Billboard began tabulating charts with electronically monitored piece count information from SoundScan, now Luminate. Pure album sales were the sole measurement utilized by the Billboard 200 albums chart through the list dated Dec. 6, 2014, after which that chart switched to a methodology that blends album sales with track equivalent album units and streaming equivalent album units. The new April 1, 2023-dated chart will be posted in full on Billboard‘s website on March 28. For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both Twitter and Instagram.

Top Rock & Alternative Albums, Top Rock Albums and Top Alternative Albums rank the week’s most popular rock and alternative albums, rock albums and alternative albums, respectively, by equivalent album units. Vinyl Albums tallies the top-selling vinyl albums of the week. Top Current Album Sales lists the week’s best-selling current (not catalog, or older albums) albums by traditional album sales.

Of Songs of Surrender’s 42,000 copies sold, physical sales comprise 33,500 (19,500 on vinyl; 13,500 on CD; and 500 on cassette) and digital downloads comprise 8,500.

TWICE’s Ready To Be: 12th Mini Album falls 1-2 on Top Album Sales in its second week (29,500; down 80%), Taylor Swift’s chart-topping Midnights climbs 5-3 (12,500; up 22%) and Morgan Wallen’s former leader One Thing at a Time dips 3-4 (11,000; down 41%). Miley Cyrus’ Endless Summer Vacation descends 2-5 with nearly 11,000 (down 80%).

TOMORROW X TOGETHER’s chart-topping The Name Chapter: Temptation falls 4-6 (almost 11,000; down 4%). 100 gecs’ 10,000 Gecs debuts at No. 7 with 7,000 – marking the first chart entry for the duo.

NCT 127’s Ay-Yo: The 4th Album Repackage falls 6-8 on Top Album Sales with 6,000 sold (down 35%), Tyler, the Creator’s Flower Boy vaults 44-9 with nearly 6,000 (up 151%) after the set was reissued on vinyl LP and Stray Kids’ former No. 1 MAXIDENT descends 9-10 with nearly 6,000 sold (down 1%).

In the week ending March 23, there were 1.832 million albums sold in the U.S. (down 6.5% compared to the previous week). Of that sum, physical albums (CDs, vinyl LPs, cassettes, etc.) comprised 1.492 million (down 7%) and digital albums comprised 340,000 (down 4.2%).

There were 627,000 CD albums sold in the week ending March 23 (down 14.5% week-over-week) and 855,000 vinyl albums sold (down 0.9%). Year-to-date CD album sales stand at 7.552 million (up 1.3% compared to the same time frame a year ago) and year-to-date vinyl album sales total 10.532 million (up 25.3%).

Overall year-to-date album sales total 22.442 million (up 7.7% compared to the same year-to-date time frame a year ago). Year-to-date physical album sales stand at 18.197 million (up 14%) and digital album sales total 4.245 million (down 12.8%).

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