THE CHAINSMOKERS PROVE THEY’RE A HIT ON THE ALBUM CHART, TOO
After three weeks, someone eventually had to bump Drake from No.1 on the album chart, and that honour belongs to the DJ duo the Chainsmokers — although they still couldn’t top Drake’s streaming numbers.
Memories … Do Not Open (Columbia), The Chainsmokers’ first full album after a string of huge pop singles and EPs, opened in the top slot in Billboard’s new album chart. It had the equivalent of 221,000 sales in the United States, including 166,000 copies sold of the full album and nearly 60 million streams of its songs, according to Nielsen.
The Chainsmokers’ combined sales and streams gave them an easy win this week, but Drake’s playlist More Life (Republic) had far more streams — no surprise for the project (and the artist) that has consistently dominated online services like Spotify and Apple Music. Songs on
More Life were streamed 135 million times last week, although sales of the full playlist amounted to just 10,000; Nielsen and Billboard’s new formula for comparing the various kinds of music consumption credits More Life with a total of 108,000 “equivalent units”.
Also this week, Ed Sheeran’s ÷ (Atlantic) fell to No.3 — that “Egg Sheeran” Easter meme, while adorable, wasn’t quite enough to lift sales — and PTX Vol IV: Classics (RCA), the latest by the perma-perky a cappella group Pentatonix, opens at No.4 with the equivalent of 54,000 sales.
Two other new releases reached the Top 10 this week: Brooklyn rapper Joey Badass bowed at No.5 with
All-Amerikkkan Badass (Cinematic), and the sharptongued singer-songwriter Father John Misty reached No.10 with Pure Comedy (Sub Pop).