Today’s thread is brought to you by the number 5.
XXXTentacion was murdered last week and his fans rallied around his song “Sad!” to jump it to number one on the Hot 100 chart. He is the first person to posthumously top the Hot 100 since The Notorious B.I.G. did that in 1997 with “Mo Money Mo Problems” (8 soloists have top the Hot 100 posthumously including John Lennon, Jim Croce, Janis Joplin and Otis Redding). He also has two top 10 albums with “?” at 3rd (94K, +397%) and “17” at 7th (55K, +446%)
Kind of interestingly, BB points out that Sting earns his 5th top 5 Hot 100 writing credit with Juice WRLD’s “Lucid Dreams”. It samples “Shape of My Heart”. Sting’s other writing credits are “Every Breath You Take” (Police), “King of Pain” (Police), “Money for Nothing” (Dire Straits) and “I’ll be Missing You” (Puff Daddy and Faith Evans – which samples “Every Breath You Take” and was a tribute to the aforementioned The Notorious B.I.G.)
1 (52) XXXTencion “Sad!” 26K (+659%), 48.9M streams [#1] (+264%), 2.9M AI (doubled)
2 (3) Cardi B, Bad Bunny and J Balvin “I Like It” 33K (+13%), 35.2M streams (+1%), 66.4M AI (+25%)
3 (1) Drake “Nice For What” 20K (-3%), 31.6M streams (-8%), 87.5M AI
4 (6) Juice WRLD “Lucid Dreams” 15K (+16%); 43.2M streams (+11%)
5 (5) Maroon 5 “Girls Like You” featuring Cardi B 52K [#1] (-1%), 29M AI (+12%), 46.9M AI (+46%)
6 (2) Post Malone “Psycho” featuring Ty Dolla $ign
7 (7) Ella Mai “Boo’d Up”
8 (4) Drake “God’s Plan”
9 (9) Ariana Grande “No Tears Left to Cry”
10 (10) Zedd, Maren Morris and Grey “The Middle” 114.1M AI [#1] (-1%)
5 Seconds of Summer who used to open for One Direction earns their third number one on the BB200 with “Youngblood” (142K, 116K sales). They are the first Australian act to get 3 number one albums. The surprise release by JAY-Z and Beyoncé of “Everything of Love” was second (123K) which snaps their streak of number ones. They can keep it alive by caveatting that their single’s streak is on track. Their numbers are low considering how well each of them do individually. It could be that fans are tired of their surprise drops, tired of their marital dirty laundry or just didn’t like the album. I’m a little surprised we aren’t awash in articles about “What went wrong” which we often see when projects stumbled (e.g. the discussion about “Solo: A Star Wars Story”). 5SOC did whip their fans into a buying frenzy to get that number one (and Niall Horan helped out), but even if The Carters had got number one, their numbers would still be grim.
Christina Aguilera, former coach on The Voice, debuts “Liberation” at number 6 with 68K (62K in sales). It is her 7th top 10 album.
