When Ghost’s new studio album Skeletá debuted atop the Billboard 200 chart (dated May 10), it not only secured the band its first No. 1, but also marked the first hard rock set to reach No. 1 in over four years. The last hard rock title at No. 1 was AC/DC’s Power Up – which debuted at No. 1 on the Nov. 28, 2020-dated list and spent a week at No. 1. In fact, Power Up and Skeletá are the only two hard rock albums to reach No. 1 in the last five years – or any point in the 2020s.
Going even further, in the last 10 years, from May 2015 to the present, of the 297 albums that have been No. 1 on the all-genre Billboard 200 chart – just eight of them were hard rock titles, including Skeletá. Scroll down to see what those eight titles are. (Hard rock albums are defined as those that are eligible for, or have charted on, Billboard’s Top Hard Rock Albums chart.)
The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption as measured in equivalent album units, compiled by Luminate. The new May 10-dated chart will be posted in full on Billboard‘s website on May 6.
All told, Skeletá scores Ghost its ninth charting effort on the Billboard 200, and its fifth set to the reach the top 10. The band had previously gone as high as No. 2 with 2022’s Impera – the act’s last full-length studio effort.
Let’s take a look some of the major milestones that Ghost achieves with its No. 1 debut, along with the hard rock albums at No. 1 over the past 10 years:
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Best Week by Units & Album Sales:
Skeletá yields Ghost’s best week ever by both equivalent album units and traditional album sales. The album earned 86,000 units in the United States in the week ending May 1, according to Luminate, with traditional album sales powering 77,000 of that sum. The latter figure was bolstered by its availability across more than 15 vinyl variants, three CD variants and four cassette variants (all containing the same tracklist, but in collectible packaging).
The act’s previous high in both metrics came in the debut week of Impera (March 26, 2022), which earned 70,000 units (of which nearly 63,000 were album sales).
Ghost also lands the biggest week of 2025, by either equivalent album units or traditional album sales, for any rock, hard rock or alternative album. (Rock and alternative albums are defined as those that are eligible for, or have charted on, Billboard’s Top Rock Albums and Top Alternative Albums charts, respectively.)
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Best Streaming Week Ever:
Skeletá garners the largest streaming week ever for a Ghost album, as it tallied 12.45 million on-demand official streams for its songs in the U.S. during the tracking week.
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Ghost Rocks on Vinyl:
Of Skeletá’s first-week album sales, vinyl purchases comprised just over 44,000 copies. That’s not just the largest sales week on vinyl for Ghost, but the biggest week for a hard rock album on vinyl in the modern era (since Luminate began tracking data in 1991). It’s also the third-largest sales week on vinyl in the modern era for any rock album, trailing only the opening weeks of blink-182’s One More Time… (49,000; 2023) and boygenius’ The Record (45,000; 2023).
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Before Ghost, There Was AC/DC:
Skeletá is the first hard rock album to lead the Billboard 200 in over four years, and the only rock, hard rock or alternative album to be No. 1 in 2025. The last hard rock album at No. 1 was AC/DC’s Power Up, which premiered at No. 1 on the Nov. 28, 2020, chart and spent one week at No. 1. The last rock, or alternative, album to lead the tally was Coldplay’s Moon Music, when it debuted at No. 1 on the Oct. 19, 2024, chart (spending one week at No. 1).
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Only Eight Hard Rock Albums Have Been No. 1 in the Last 10 Years:
In the last 10 years, just eight hard rock albums have been No. 1 on the Billboard 200: Skeletá, Power Up, Tool’s Fear Inoculum (Sept. 14, 2019 chart), Slipknot’s We Are Not Your Kind (Aug. 24, 2019), Foo Fighters’ Concrete and Gold (Oct. 7, 2017), Metallica’s Hardwired… To Self-Destruct (Dec. 10, 2016), Disturbed’s Immortalized (Sept. 12, 2015) and Breaking Benjamin’s Dark Before Dawn (July 11, 2015).
