Fans drinking up Beyoncé’s latest; Prince still rules
Music fans’ drink of choice is Lemonade.
Beyoncé’s sixth solo effort made its debut atop the Billboard 200 album chart, selling 653,000 equivalent album units, according to Nielsen Music. That total includes album-equivalent streaming numbers (115.2 million streams) and track sales (907,500 downloads), in addition to pure albums sold (485,000 copies).
The album’s most-streamed songs were led by Sorry (12.8 million), which caused a stir on social media with lyrics about cheating. Other popular tracks included Hold Up (11.3 million);
6 Inch, featuring The Weeknd (10.8 million); and Don’t Hurt
Yourself, with Jack White (10.1 million). Lemonade is Beyoncé’s sixth No. 1 on the album chart, arriving three years after her previous self-titled album debuted with 617,000 copies sold in December 2013.The 12-song project was exclusive to the streaming service Tidal for 24 hours, after which it was made available digitally on iTunes and Amazon. A physical version of the album will be released Friday.
Elsewhere on the chart, Prince continued to rule with posthumous sales, taking five slots of the top 10. Greatest-hits album The
Very Best of Prince dropped to No. 2 with 391,000 equivalent units sold (216,000 pure album sales). The late icon’s other top sellers were the Purple Rain soundtrack(150,000), The Hits/
The B-Sides (106,000), Ultimate (40,000) and 1999 (36,000).
His songs continued to dominate the charts as well. Purple
Rain was the most downloaded track of the week with 282,000 — jumping to No. 4 on the Hot 100 as a result. Prince had six more of the top 10 best sellers, followed by When Doves Cry (198,000),
Little Red Corvette (161,000), Let’s Go Crazy (156,000), 1999 (147,000), Kiss (144,000) and Raspberry Beret (127,000).