Rihanna Tops Artist 100 Chart for First Time Thanks to Super Bowl Performance Gains
Written by djfrosty on February 22, 2023
Rihanna vaults from No. 22 to No. 1 on the Billboard Artist 100 (dated Feb. 25), becoming the top musical act for the first time since the chart began in 2014, thanks to catalog gains following her performance at the Super Bowl LVII Halftime Show on Feb. 12.
Rihanna performed 13 songs during her set, and in turn, generated her largest streaming week ever, according to Luminate. Her song catalog earned 166.1 million U.S. on-demand official streams in the week ending Feb. 16. That’s up 156% compared to the previous week’s sum of 65 million. (She logged her previous best streaming week in the week ending Feb. 25, 2016, when her collected songs rung up 101.5 million clicks in the U.S., shortly after the release of her most recent studio album, Anti.)
Five of Rihanna’s albums chart the latest Billboard 200: Anti (No. 8), Good Girl Gone Bad (No. 15), Unapologetic (No. 18), Loud (No. 26) and Talk That Talk (No. 49). She becomes just the seventh act in the last 50 years to chart at least five albums in the top 50, joining Taylor Swift (who has claimed at least five titles in the region 18 times, including on the latest chart), Mac Miller (once following his death in 2018), Prince (three times, following his death in 2016), Whitney Houston (three times, following her death in 2012), the Glee cast (once in 2010) and Garth Brooks (four times in 1992).
On the Billboard Hot 100, Rihanna tallies four songs, three of which are former No. 1s that re-enter: “Umbrella,” featuring Jay-Z (No. 37), “Diamonds” (No. 44) and “We Found Love,” featuring Calvin Harris (No. 48). Her latest single, “Lift Me Up,” which debuted at No. 2 in November, rises 52-41.
Among other Artist 100 chart moves, Paramore re-enters at No. 5, marking the trio’s first top 10 appearance, thanks to its new studio album, This Is Why. The set opens at No. 1 on Top Rock & Alternative Albums and No. 2 on the Billboard 200 with 64,000 equivalent album units earned. It earned the act its first No. 1 on the Alternative Airplay chart, among six top 10s, with the title cut earlier this month.
The Artist 100 measures artist activity across key metrics of music consumption, blending album and track sales, radio airplay and streaming to provide a weekly multi-dimensional ranking of artist popularity.