Global Courant
One week after Taylor Swift’s re-issued edition of “Midnights” shot back up the charts, knocking Morgan Wallen off the top for the first time in three months, K-pop group Stray Kids takes the crown. The eight-member group earns its third No. 1 album with “Five-Star,” following “Maxident” and “Ordinary,” both of which were released last year.
The 12-song set clocks in with the equivalent of 249,500 albums sold in the United States, with 231,000 of those units coming from CD sales — of which there were 18 different variants — according to the tracking service Luminate. In total, the album earned 20 million on-demand official streams. With lyrics mostly sung in Korean, “Five-Star” is just the third non-English album to hit No. 1, behind Karol G’s “Mañana Será Bonito” and Tomorrow X Together’s “The Name Chapter: Temptation.”
Meanwhile, Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” finds itself at No. 2 with 117,000 equivalent units earned and Jelly Roll debuts at No. 3 with his country debut “Whitsitt Chapel.” The rapper-turned-country star starts with 90,000 units earned and 33 million streams — his biggest week yet and the first top 40-charting release of his career. Although he’s released over 20 albums, EPs, and mixtapes since 2010, “Whitsitt Chapel” is Jelly Roll’s first country-leaning record in a catalog that mostly contains Southern rap.
Country music also makes a big splash on the Hot 100 where Wallen’s “Last Night” hits a 10-week mark at No. 1 and Luke Combs’ cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” is at No. 4, surpassing the No. 6 peaks of the 1988 original. For the first time since 2000, the singles chart boasts two top-five singles.
Back on the Billboard 200, Korean pop group Enhyphen earns their highest charting album with “Dark Blood” entering at No. 4 with 88,000 equivalent album units earned and nearly four million on-demand official streams. “Dark Blood’s” figures on the Billboard 200 came only after the release of their CD, which arrived as a series of collectible CD packages (17 in total).
Also new this week is Metro Boomin’s soundtrack to “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” which enters at No. 7 with 66,000 equivalent album units earned and 84 million on-demand official streams. The collection was far from sparse in its featured guest list, with Metro recruiting everyone from Future, Don Toliver, 21 Savage and Offset, to Coi Leray, Lil Uzi Vert, Swae Lee, A$AP Rocky and plenty more. others.
“They would send me packs of scenes. Most of them were halfway finished, but I’d get an idea and just really draw inspiration from those,” Metro told Variety when asked about his artistic process for the soundtrack. “Everything they did with the film, from the plot to the animation to the comedy, to everything, just really made it easy for me to see what I needed to do. Because they had already set the bar with the film, so I just wanted to see how sonically I could support that as much as I could.”
Foo Fighters’ “But Here We Are” debuts at No. 8 with 62,000 units earned and is the 10th top 10 album for the group and the first since the sudden death of drummer Taylor Hawkins in 2022. Moneybagg Yo’s “Hard to Love” is the sixth album to debut in the top 10 this week, coming in at No. 10 with 51,000 units earned and 67 million streams.
Filling out the rest of the top 10 is Swift’s “Midnights” at No. 5 (83,000 units), Lil Durk’s “Almost Healed” at No. 6 (67,000 units) and SZA’s “SOS” at No. 9 (51,000 units).
A slate of repeats fills out the top 10 of the Hot 100 including Lil Durk’s “All My Life,” featuring J. Cole, which is at No. 5, and SZA’s “Kill Bill” is still at No. 6. Toosii’s “Favorite Song” slips to No. 7 and Eslabon Armado and Peso Pluma’s “Ella Baila Sola” also descends to No. 8. Metro Boomin, the Weeknd and 21 Savage’s “Creepin'” remains at No. 9 and Taylor Swift’s “Karma,” featuring Ice Spice, falls to No. 10.
