Maybe DJ Khaled and Drake said it best: “No New Friends.” Applied to the current Billboard 200, the phrase is best attributed, “no new releases” of note. That said no one is shocked to hear that the invincible Taylor Swift rules the charts for an eighth non-consecutive week. Even with units and sales alike down from the previous week, 1989 still stood tall, selling 172,000 copies.
Swift was unopposed at the top spot, with the next closest album in sales (Guardians of the Galaxy Soundtrack) and impact (Nicki Minaj’s The Pinkprint) not coming anywhere close. 172,000 versus 70,000 copies were the difference in sales between first and second, while 244,000 versus 84,000 was the difference in units. The confusing newly implemented units system certainly elevates artistic significance, though it makes vast difference between the top selling and top impacting albums.
With no new debuts, the top 10 is familiar, hosting several familiar albums. Lately, there is notable separation between the Billboard 200 and the top selling albums chart, referenced in the aforementioned paragraph. Examining sales figures themselves, there are several albums that are lower on the Billboard 200 that outsold higher charting albums. Examples of this include Guardians of the Galaxy (#5), Into The Woods (#8), and J. Cole’s 2014 Forest Hills Drive (#6), which all are top five albums on the sales chart. Go figure!
Back to Taylor Swift. She couldn’t hold down the Billboard Hot 100 anymore. After Hozier spent weeks trying to unseat her at #2 with “Take Me To Church,” an opponent with a higher ceiling got the job done. Yes, Mark Ronson and the supremely talented Bruno Mars “funked their way to the top” Lana Del Rey. “Uptown Funk!” is just too funky to resist, hence why it reaches #1 on the Hot 100.
Unfortunately on the albums side of things, next week’s charts will probably continue to be characterized by lethargy. Honestly, is anyone expecting Rae Sremmurd’s SremmLife to be the savior to album sales/units? The southern rap duo may have led albums to check out this week, but more activity to infuse new life onto the charts comes during the January 13 release week.
