Chart Watch: All 18 Songs From The Weeknd’s ‘Starboy’ Blast Into the Hot 100
The Weeknd lands his second #1 album in a row, as Starboy enters the Billboard 200 in the top spot. Moreover, all 18 songs from Starboy are listed on this week’s Hot 100. Only one other artist has ever had 18 or more songs on the Hot 100 at the same time: In May, Drake charted 20 songs all at once, in the same week that his album Views debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200.
Starboy sold 348K copies in its first week (including 209K in traditional album sales) Just two albums so far this year — the aforementioned Drake’s Views and Beyoncé’s Lemonade — have rung up bigger first-week tallies. Note that all three of these artists are R&B or hip-hop. I’d say all three are African American — but two of them are Canadian! The Weeknd is the third Canadian artist to land a #1 album in 2016, following Drake and Shawn Mendes.
The Weeknd’s previous album, Beauty Behind the Madness, sold 411K copies in its first week (including 326K in traditional album sales). It won a Grammy for Best Urban Contemporary Album.
A whopping 117K of the total units for Starboy were streaming equivalent album units (which translates to 175.2 million streams of the songs from Starboy). Billboard’s Keith Caulfield reports that Starboy is only the second album to surpass 100K in streaming equivalent album units in a single week, following (yes) Drake’s Views. Drake’s album did it three times: during its first (163K), third (124K), and fourth (111K) weeks.
Six of the Weeknd’s 18 charted songs are listed in the top 40. They are “Starboy” (featuring Daft Punk), which jumps from #3 to #2; “Party Monster,” which jumps from #39 to #16; “I Feel It Coming” (featuring Daft Punk), which leaps from #48 to #22; “Sidewalks” (featuring Kendrick Lamar), which debuts at #27; “Reminder,” which debuts at #31; and “Six Feet Under,” which debuts at #34. This is a reflection of how important streaming has become on the Hot 100.
Pentatonix and red-hot composer Lin-Manuel Miranda each have two albums in this week’s top 10.
Pentatonix is represented with A Pentatonix Christmas, which rebounds from #4 to #2 in its sixth week, and its 2014 album, That’s Christmas to Me, which rebounds from #12 to #7 in its 29th week on the chart. (It, too, peaked at #2.) It’s #1 on Top Catalog Albums for the 11th (cumulative) week.
Miranda is represented with the Moana soundtrack, which leaps from #16 to #5 in its second week, and the Hamilton Broadway cast album, which dips from #9 to #10 in its 62nd week. The latter album peaked at #3 in the wake of the Tony Awards.
Miranda wrote songs for Moana, which has been #1 at the box-office the past two weekends. Disney is pushing two of those songs, “How Far I’ll Go” and “You’re Welcome,” for Oscar noms. If one of them wins Best Song at the Oscars on Feb. 26, Miranda will become the 13th member of the very exclusive “EGOT” club. Moreover, he would become the youngest person ever to complete the EGOT. Miranda will be 37 at the time by the Oscars — two years younger than the current youngest-ever EGOT winner, Robert Lopez. (Lopez was 39 in 2014 when he completed his awards sweep by winning an Oscar for co-writing “Let It Go” from Frozen). Miranda has won three Tonys, two Grammys, and an Emmy. Will he win an Oscar, too? Stay tuned.
(Miranda may have three albums in next week’s top 10. The Hamilton Mixtape album is likely to debut at #1.)
Top Songs
Rae Sremmurd’s “Black Beatles” (featuring Gucci Mane) tops the Hot 100 for the fourth week in its 12th week on the chart. “Black Beatles” sold 83K copies this week, which puts it at #1 on Top Digital Songs for the fourth straight week. The song logged 42 million U.S. streams this week. “Black Beatles” also holds at #2 on the U.K.’s Official Singles Chart. It was kept from the top spot by Clean Bandit’s “Rockabye,” which is in its fourth week on top.
The Weeknd’s “Starboy” (featuring Daft Punk) moves up from #3 to #2 in its 11th week. This is its sixth non-consecutive week at #2.
The Chainsmokers’ “Closer” (featuring Halsey) dips from #2 to #3 in its 18th week. The song logged 12 weeks at #1. “Closer” tops the 2 million mark in digital sales this week.
Ariana Grande’s “Side to Side” (featuring Nicki Minaj) rebounds from #6 to #4 in its 14th week. This equals its highest ranking to date.
Bruno Mars’s “24K Magic,” the first single from Mars’s album of the same name, dips from #4 to #5 its eighth week. The first two singles from each of Mars’s first two studio albums reached #1. “24K Magic” isn’t moving in the right direction. The single’s party sound may have been too reminiscent of “Uptown Funk,” the Mark Ronson smash that featured Mars. “24K Magic” is fun, but there was no element of surprise, as there was with “Just the Way You Are” and “Locked out of Heaven,” the lead singles from Mars’s previous studio albums.
“Juju on That Beat (TZ Anthem)” by Zay Hilfigerrr & Zayion dips from #5 to #6 in its 10th week.
DJ Snake’s “Let Me Love You” (featuring Justin Bieber) rebounds from #8 to #7 in its 17th week. The song reached #4.
Maroon 5’s “Don’t Wanna Know” (featuring Kendrick Lamar) jumps from #10 to #8 its eighth week. This is its highest ranking to date.
twenty one pilots’ “Heathens” drops from #7 to #9 in its 24th week. The song spent four weeks at #2.
D.R.A.M.’s “Broccoli” (featuring Lil Yachty) dips from #9 to #10 in its 25th week. The song reached #5.
Hailee Steinfeld has both a song and a movie in the top 15 for the second third straight week. Her movie, The Edge of Seventeen (excellent, by the way), has ranked in the top 15 at the box-office in each of its first three weekends. (This week it drops from #10 to #12). Her single, “Starving,” has ranked in the top 15 on the Hot 100 for the past three weeks. (This week it jumps from #13 to #12 in its 18th week.) “Starving” is a collabo with the brother duo Grey which features EDM star Zedd.
“Bad Things” by Machine Gun Kelly & Camila Cabello surges from #28 to #17 in its fifth week. This is Cabello’s second top 20 hit under her own name, following “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” a collabo with Shawn Mendes. Cabello, 19, has also had two top 20 hits as a member of Fifth Harmony.
Mariah Carey’s 1994 holiday classic “All I Want for Christmas Is You” re-enters the Hot 100 at #23. The song has sold 3,208,000 digital copies, the most of any Christmas song. Want to know the last non-holiday Carey song to rank this high on the Hot 100? That would be “#Beautiful” (featuring Miguel), which rose to #15 in the spring of 2013.
Top Albums
Last week’s top two albums each drop two notches in their second weeks. Metallica’s Hardwired…to Self-Destruct drops from #1 to #3. Bruno Mars’s 24K Magic drops from #2 to #4.
Trolls holds at #6 in its 10th week. The album peaked at #3. It is #1 on Top Soundtracks for the fourth straight week. (How can Trolls be #1 on Top Soundtracks when Moana is ranked higher on the Billboard 200? Because the Top Soundtracks chart is determined solely by sales, while he Billboard 200 factors in streaming and digital track sales.)
Michael Bublé’s Christmas rebounds from #19 to #8 in its 52nd chart week. This is the sixth consecutive Christmas season that this album has appeared in the top 10 — which is a record since the album chart became a weekly feature in 1956. The album will top the 4 million mark in U.S. sales next week. (It’s just 14K away.)
Between the two Pentatonix albums and Bublé, there are three Christmas albums in this week’s top 10. This last happened in December 2014. Two of the same albums (That’s Christmas to Me and Bublé’s Christmas) were involved then. The third album in the top 10 then was Idina Menzel’s Holiday Wishes. (There are 49 Christmas albums on the Billboard 200 this week.)
Miranda Lambert’s The Weight of These Wings drops from its #3 peak to #9 in its second week. The album is #1 on Top Country Albums for the second week.
Four albums drop out of the top 10 this week. A Tribe Called Quest’s We Got It From Here…Thank You 4 Your Service drops from #5 to #15. Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood’s Christmas Together drops from #7 to #14. Rae Sremmurd’s SremmLife drops from #8 to #16. Drake’s Views drops from #10 to #12, ending a 30-consecutive-week run in the top 10.
Garth Brooks’s Gunslinger debuts at #25. Unless it moves up in a subsequent week (which is rare — albums generally peak in their opening weeks), Gunslinger will become the lowest-charting regular studio album of Brooks’s career. That distinction is currently held by his eponymous debut album, which was released in April 1989 and finally peaked at #13 in February 1992.
Let me hasten to add that Gunslinger is included in two other products, which are plainly cannibalizing its sales. It is included in Brooks’s 10-CD boxed set, The Ultimate Collection, which would have appeared in the top 10 for the third straight week were it not for Billboard‘s policy to bar low-priced albums from the chart in their first four weeks of release. The collection sold 78K copies this week, which would have put it at #3 on the Billboard 200. And Gunslinger is combined with Christmas Together in a special package that zooms from #134 to #21 this week. (If you combined the total activity of Gunslinger and this double package, it would have ranked #7 this week.)
That title, Gunslinger, is a nod to classic “country and western” imagery. The definitive example is Marty Robbins’s 1959 album, Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs — which spent two months in the top 10 in early 1960. (The album contained Robbins’s #1 hit “El Paso”).
Coming attractions: Look for The Hamilton Mixtape to debut at #1 next week. The Rolling Stones’ Blue & Lonesome, Childish Gambino’s “Awaken, My Love!,“ and Grace VanderWaal’s Perfectly Imperfect EP also seem headed for top 10 debuts.
