A single Black Friday title — Taylor Swift’s Goal-exclusive bodily editions of The Tortured Poets Division: The Anthology — has despatched TTPD hovering again to the highest of the Billboard 200.
Kevin Winter/TAS24/Getty Photographs for TAS Rights Mana/Getty Photographs North America
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Kevin Winter/TAS24/Getty Photographs for TAS Rights Mana/Getty Photographs North America
Vacation staples and Kendrick Lamar’s GNX are nonetheless storming this week’s Billboard charts, as they mix to lock down eight of the week’s High 10 songs. However the vacation that is had the best impression on this week’s Billboard 200 albums chart is not Christmas, however Black Friday. That is as a result of a single Black Friday title — Taylor Swift’s Goal-exclusive bodily editions of The Tortured Poets Division: The Anthology — has despatched TTPD hovering again to the highest of the Billboard 200 for a sixteenth nonconsecutive week, practically eight months after its preliminary launch.
TOP ALBUMS
Final week, Kendrick Lamarposted a decisive No. 1 debut following the shock launch of his new album, GNX. The album was a blockbuster proper out of the gate, with streaming numbers so robust he wound up touchdown seven of the week’s High 10 singles — together with all the High 5 — all by himself, with little assist from gross sales or radio airplay. It was the type of efficiency that portends a long term on the high of the charts, as streaming tends to beget extra streaming.
One week later, as anticipated on this house, he is already been knocked out of the highest spot. Taylor Swift seized on the season’s second-most-lucrative vacation, Black Friday, and soared from No. 8 to No. 1 because of the first-ever bodily launch of The Tortured Poets Division: The Anthology — that is the epic model of Swift’s album that prolonged its monitor listing from 16 to 31 songs. In the event you needed a duplicate of the complete 31-song set on vinyl or CD, you could not get it till Black Friday, and you could possibly solely rating a duplicate at Goal.
This, as with most issues Taylor Swift has touched this facet of the Cats film, proved to be an enormous success: The album registered 405,000 “equal album items” — Billboard‘s metric for the cocktail of gross sales and streaming that informs its Billboard 200 rankings — which blows previous even the blockbuster quantity (319,000) posted by Lamar’s GNX final week. Along with her $2 billion Eras Tour closing this previous Sunday, Swift’s victory lap now features a sixteenth nonconsecutive week on the high of the charts for the yr’s greatest album.
Unsurprisingly, GNX slips solely a single spot, to No. 2 — and that album is hardly struggling, on condition that three of its songs stay within the High 10. (Extra on that beneath.) And, talking of juggernauts, the Depraved soundtrack additionally slips only one spot, from No. 2 to No. 3.
Juice WRLD debuts at No. 4 with The Celebration By no means Ends; that album is the late rapper’s third launch to debut within the High 5 since his loss of life in 2019. (All six of Juice WRLD’s albums have hit the High 5, and absolutely half of them have come out posthumously.) And, talking of posthumous returns to the High 10, Bing Crosby has simply registered his first High 10 album in 64 years: A brand new compilation known as Final Christmas, which assembles among the legendary singer’s best-loved vacation music, jumps from No. 18 to No. 9.
Rounding out the High 10, Sabrina Carpenter’s Quick n’ Candy dips from No. 3 to No. 5, Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Laborious and Comfortable slides from No. 5 to No. 6, and Michael Bublé’s Christmas re-enters the High 10, climbing from No. 12 to No. 7. Chappell Roan’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess rises from No. 10 to No. 8, whereas Tyler, The Creator’s CHROMAKOPIA tumbles from No. 4 to No. 10.
TOP SONGS
In the event you’ve grown weary of Mariah Carey’s 1994 vacation staple “All I Need for Christmas Is You,” take a deep breath. As a result of it is again in a giant means, hovering from final week’s spot at No. 10 — a chart determine deflated by the seven new Kendrick Lamar songs that debuted above it — all the way in which to No. 1. It is the music’s sixth straight yr hitting No. 1, which is a file, to say the least. (Just one different music has even two distinct stays atop the chart in several years: Chubby Checker’s “The Twist,” which hit No. 1 in 1960 and 1962.)
The songs that appear likeliest to problem Carey’s reign within the weeks to return, Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Across the Christmas Tree” and Wham!’s “Final Christmas,” rise to No. 2 and No. 3 from No. 15 and No. 18, respectively. The Wham! music, specifically, appears to have generated a little bit of momentum — it is the monitor’s fortieth anniversary this yr, and No. 3 marks its new all-time chart peak — so it is not out of the query that it might displace “All I Need for Christmas Is You” in some unspecified time in the future this season, as Brenda Lee did for a couple of weeks final yr.
Three of Lamar’s songs are nonetheless rattling round within the High 10, as “TV Off (feat. Lefty Gunplay)” slips from No. 2 to No. 4, “Luther (feat. SZA)” slides from No. 3 to No. 6, and “Squabble Up” tumbles from No. 1 to No. 7. Given the sheer drive of the vacation surge, that is awfully spectacular. And, talking of the vacation surge, Bobby Helms’ indestructible “Jingle Bell Rock” — I ought to know, I’ve tried to kill the music myself — bounds from No. 19 to No. 5, whereas Burl Ives’ “Holly Jolly Christmas” leaps from No. 33 to No. 10.
Two previous reliables are nonetheless hanging in there, too, as Shaboozey’s “A Bar Music (Tipsy)” — which stays tied for an all-time file 19 nonconsecutive weeks at No. 1 — dips from No. 6 to No. 8, and Woman Gaga and Bruno Mars’ “Die With a Smile” slides from No. 7 to No. 9.
WORTH NOTING
One of many yr’s greatest chart-adjacent tales has revolved round Shaboozey’s quest for the all-time longest run at No. 1 on the Billboard Sizzling 100 — which, as famous above, has stalled out at 19 weeks, which ties the file set by Lil Nas X’s “Outdated City Highway (feat. Billy Ray Cyrus)” in 2019. Each runs are exceptional, however additionally they converse to how dramatically the Billboard charts have modified within the streaming period. Each songs have been vastly widespread by any metric, however few would argue that they are the 2 greatest singles within the historical past of the charts, you understand?
Both means, it is nearly inevitable that they are about to be left within the mud, most certainly someday in late 2025 — and it is not out of the query that the all-time file might wind up nearly out of attain, and prior to you may suppose.
This week, as chronicled above, Mariah Carey’s “All I Need for Christmas Is You” returns to No. 1 on the Billboard Sizzling 100 for the sixth straight yr. However that solely takes us again to 2019; earlier than that, the 1994 monitor spent loads of time on the charts, reaching as excessive as No. 3, however it by no means topped the Sizzling 100 outright till 5 years in the past. (Vacation songs usually did not.)
This week marks the fifteenth week at No. 1 for “All I Need for Christmas Is You,” following a number of multi-week runs within the high spot from 2019 to 2023. In 2023, the monitor shared the vacation season with “Rockin’ Across the Christmas Tree,” which rode a surge of TikTok placements and a brand new official video to 3 weeks atop the Sizzling 100. (Naturally, “All I Need for Christmas Is You” spent all three of these weeks at No. 2.)
After this week, there are three extra Sizzling 100 charts which can be positive to be flooded with vacation songs — and which current chart historical past suggests can be topped by both “All I Need for Christmas Is You,” “Rockin’ Across the Christmas Tree” or this yr’s darkish horse, “Final Christmas.” If Carey tops all three of them, which to date feels possible, that can prolong her nonconsecutive run at No. 1 to 18 weeks — one wanting the all-time file held by Shaboozey and Lil Nas X.
Round this time subsequent yr, although, all bets are off. And by 2026 or 2027, we could possibly be taking a look at a file that appears principally untouchable, irrespective of how a lot streaming algorithms prolong the life spans of our hit songs.
