albums
Twenty One Pilots don’t do anything small. The Columbus, Ohio duo of singer/guitarist Tyler Joseph and drummer Josh Dun are fans of expansive world-building who’ve cooked up an alternate universe filled with evil empires, oppressed subjects and mysterious forces across a series of albums featuring more hidden clues than Taylor Swift’s Easter basket.
But, like all good things, every story has to come to an end eventually — and for 21P, the final chapter in their long-running Blurryface saga has arrived in the form of their seventh studio album, Clancy. The 13-track collection was originally timed to drop exactly nine years after the Blurryface album, which introduced fans to a title character that Joseph has said represents his (and our) insecurities and anxieties.
On the 2018 concept album follow-up, Trench, the duo introduced the character Clancy and additional elements of a shadowy alternate cement-walled world called Dema on the continent Trench, governed by a group of nine totalitarian bishops and their leader, Nico, who are trying to keep down a rebellion by the Banditos. The story continued on 2021’s Scaled and Icy, a more pop-leaning effort on which Nico was betrayed and narrator Clancy escaped to a an island where he was give the same powers as the Bishops.
Always happy to let their music do the talking, the duo have not spoken at length about the conclusion of the story told on Clancy. The album opens with the ominous first single, “Overcompensate,” a classic combo of Dun’s skittery, hard-hitting drums and Joseph’s signature mix of singing and rap-like cadence over lyrics that sprinkle in bits of the ongoing mythology.
As always, Joseph’s storytelling seamlessly intertwines personal struggles with big picture storytelling, from suffocating anxiety that feels life-threatening (“Next Semester,” “Backslide”), to the dread of insomnia (“Routines in the Night”) and the knot-in-stomach ache of a painfully shy person forced to keep brave-facing it in public appearances to keep the show going (“Lavish”).
The album bears the expected hallmarks of the pair’s by-now-familiar rock-meets-beats sound and vision, layered with some new wrinkles of frenetic, punky new wave (“Navigating”) and gentle 1970s AM radio balladry (“The Craving (Jenna’s Version)”).
Keep reading to see how Billboard ranks the songs on 21P’s new LP Clancy, from worst to best, below.
“Snap Back”
Morgan Wallen recently broke Garth Brooks‘s record for the most weeks a country album has spent atop the all-genre Billboard 200 chart, when Wallen’s One Thing at a Time returned to the pinnacle of the Billboard 200 (dated March 16), earning 19 nonconsecutive weeks at the top of the ranking. Those 19 weeks topped Brooks’s […]
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Morgan Wallen’s One Thing at a Time clocks an 11th consecutive, and total, week atop the Billboard 200 albums chart (dated May 27). It now has the most weeks in a row at No. 1 since the Titanic soundtrack sailed at No. 1 for 16 consecutive weeks (its entire run at No. 1).
One Thing at a Time is also the first album of any genre to spend its first 11 weeks at No. 1 since Whitney Houston’s Whitney also ruled for its first 11 weeks in 1987 (its total run at No. 1). The only other album to spend its first 11 weeks at No. 1 is Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life, which logged its first 13 weeks at No. 1 (of a total of 14 weeks in the top slot) in late 1976 and early 1977.
One Thing at a Time debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart dated March 18 and has yet to depart the top slot. It has now surpassed the total No. 1 run of Wallen’s last release, Dangerous: The Double Album, which spent its first 10 weeks at No. 1 (Jan. 23-March 27, 2021-dated charts).
One Thing at a Time earned 134,500 equivalent album units in the United States in the week ending May 18 (down 5%), according to Luminate.
The last album to spend at least 11 weeks in total at No. 1 was Bad Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Ti, which pieced together 13 nonconsecutive weeks atop the list in May-October 2022.
One Thing at a Time has the most weeks at No. 1 for any country album since Taylor Swift’s Fearless notched 11 nonconsecutive weeks at No. 1 in late 2008 and early 2009. (Country albums are those that have charted on, or are eligible for, Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart.)
Further, Wallen has now spent a total of 21 weeks at No. 1 across his two chart-topping albums (One Thing, with 11 weeks, and Dangerous, with 10). He surpasses Swift for the most weeks at No. 1 this decade (2020-onwards). Swift logged eight weeks at No. 1 with Folklore in 2020, four with Evermore in 2020-21, two with Fearless (Taylor’s Version) in 2021, one with Red (Taylor’s Version) in 2021 and five with Midnights in 2022. Swift will release her third Taylor’s Version re-recorded album, Speak Now, on July 7.
Also in the top 10 of the new Billboard 200, Jonas Brothers notch their seventh top 10 with the No. 3 arrival of The Album, YoungBoy Never Broke Again achieves his 15th top 10 (and third of 2023) with the No. 4 bow of Richest Opp, Bailey Zimmerman earns his second top 10 with the No. 7 debut of Religiously. The Album., and Daft Punk’s chart-topping Random Access Memories re-enters the chart at No. 8 after its 10th anniversary deluxe reissue.
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. Units comprise album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Each unit equals one album sale, or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an album. The new May 27, 2023-dated chart will be posted in full on Billboard‘s website on May 23. For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both Twitter and Instagram.
Of One Thing at a Time’s 134,500 equivalent album units earned in the week ending May 18, SEA units comprise 124,500 (down 7%, equaling 165.47 million on-demand official streams of the set’s 36 songs), album sales comprise 8,000 (up 61% after the release of its standard vinyl album on May 12) and TEA units comprise 2,000 (down 5%).
Taylor Swift’s chart-topping Midnights rises 3-2 with 60,000 equivalent album units earned (up 1%).
Jonas Brothers notch their seventh top 10-charting album on the Billboard 200 as The Album debuts at No. 3. The set launches with 52,000 equivalent album units earned. Of that sum, album sales comprise 35,500 (making it the top-selling album of the week), SEA units comprise 16,000 (equaling 20.5 million on-demand official streams of the set’s 12 songs) and TEA units comprise a little over 500.
The album’s current single, “Waffle House,” climbed 88-82 on the most recently published Billboard Hot 100 songs chart (dated May 20). It also stepped 37-34 on the all-format Radio Songs tally the same week. On the Pop Airplay chart, “Waffle” wings 18-15 on the latest list (dated May 27).
The prolific YoungBoy Never Broke Again clocks his third top 10 of 2023 on the Billboard 200, as Richest Opp bows at No. 4. In total, it’s the rapper’s 15th top 10 — all earned since 2018. He now ties Drake and Future for the second-most top 10s among rap acts. Only Jay-Z and Nas have more among rap acts, each with 16.
Richest Opp enters with 51,000 equivalent album units earned. SEA units comprise nearly all of that sum, with 50,500 (equaling 74.37 million on-demand official streams of the set’s 17 songs). Album sales comprise 500 and TEA units comprise a negligible sum.
In total, YoungBoy Never Broke Again has placed 30 titles on the Billboard 200 albums chart, starting with AI YoungBoy in 2017, which peaked at No. 24 in August 2017.
SZA’s former leader SOS falls 4-5 with 51,000 equivalent album units earned (down 5%), while Wallen’s Dangerous: The Double Album, dips 5-6 with 48,000 (down 1%).
Bailey Zimmerman nabs his second top 10-charting effort on the Billboard 200 as Religiously. The Album. starts at No. 7. The set bows with 46,500 equivalent album units earned. Of that sum, SEA units comprise 38,000 (equaling 50.5 million on-demand official streams of the set’s 15 songs), album sales comprise 8,000 and TEA units comprise 500.
In October 2022, Zimmerman made his Billboard 200 debut with Leave the Light On, debuting and peaking at No. 9. In a little over a year, he’s earned eight top 40-charting his on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart (through the most recently published list, dated May 20).
Chart-watchers may have noticed that there are three titles in the top 10 that use the word “album” in their title: Jonas Brothers’ The Album at No. 3, Wallen’s Dangerous: The Double Album at No. 6 and Zimmerman’s Religiously. The Album. at No. 7. It’s the first time at least three albums concurrently in the top 10 have had the word “album” in their title since August of 1963, when Billboard combined its separate stereo and mono album charts into one single album chart. (See more history on the Billboard 200, which began publishing as a regular, weekly fixture in March of 1956.)
Daft Punk’s former No. 1 Random Access Memories jumps back onto the Billboard 200, re-entering at No. 8 with 40,000 equivalent album units earned (up 1,046%). The set was reissued for its 10th anniversary in a deluxe edition with previously unreleased archival tracks from the album’s recording sessions. Of its 40,000 units earned, album sales comprise 32,000, SEA units comprise nearly 8,000 and TEA units comprise a negligible sum. The set became the first leader for the duo, which disbanded in 2021, spending its first two weeks at No. 1 in June 2013.
Rounding out the top 10 of the new Billboard 200 is Ed Sheeran’s – (Subtract), falling 2-9 with nearly 40,000 equivalent album units (down 64%) in its second week and Swift’s chart-topping Lover, descending 7-10 with 38,000 units (up 2%).
Luminate, the independent data provider to the Billboard charts, completes a thorough review of all data submissions used in compiling the weekly chart rankings. Luminate reviews and authenticates data. In partnership with Billboard, data deemed suspicious or unverifiable is removed, using established criteria, before final chart calculations are made and published.
Size matters. And if country albums were real estate, the property would range from tiny houses to mansions, expanded by a host of duplexes and apartment complexes.
Morgan Wallen‘s No. 1 album One Thing at a Time boasts a hefty 36 tracks, while Bailey Zimmerman‘s top 10 Leave the Light On features a more traditional nine. Jason Aldean dropped two sets, Macon and Georgia, that were intended to form a double album, Macon, Georgia. ERNEST stretched his Flower Shops project into the deluxe Two Dozen Roses album. Mitchell Tenpenny and Dustin Lynch have released EPs offering as few as three songs, and Alana Springsteen recently put out a six-song EP, Twenty Something: Messing It Up, that represents the first of three volumes that will fill out as an 18-track album. The options are wide enough that official press releases sometimes avoid distinguishing between albums and EPs, instead referring to a new release as an innocuous “collection.”
Numerous country executives have confessed to confusion over the developments — how many different versions of an album/EP/collection are there? And which product level is a particular artist working? It’s not clear if music buyers, who may only focus on just a handful of individual artists, are as flummoxed.
“If we’re going to be completely honest, they might be a little confused as to ‘OK — is this an album? Is it an EP or LP? Is it a digital single bundle?’” Big Loud senior vp/GM Patch Culbertson says. “But really, they’re not tripping over themselves too much as to what it truly is. It’s just ‘Is this great music that’s being pushed to me from this artist?’”
That “digital single” reference is behind the range of options. When music was tied to physical formats, vinyl albums could hold only 22-23 minutes of music on one side before the sound quality began to deteriorate. CDs were limited to 79 minutes.
Record labels were free to issue two- or three-disc projects, but manufacturing the extra disc and/or odd-size packaging incurred an extra cost.
In the streaming age, those limitations disappeared. The audience was able to pick specific tracks out of a collection for streaming or downloading, and its consumption simultaneously became easier to track. As a result, labels now tailor the size of new album or EP releases to a range of factors, particularly the artists’ recording volume and the demand of the fan base.
“It varies by every single artist in every situation,” says Sony Music Nashville COO Ken Robold. “I’d like to say, ‘Yeah, here’s the formula,’ but there really isn’t one anymore. It boils down to where the artist is with the songs and where they are in their fan development stage.”
Figuring out the right formula for a particular artist is more art than science, even though there’s plenty of data to work with. In the case of Wallen, who landed 35 cuts from his 36-song One Thing on the Hot Country Songs chart dated March 18, all the material was consumed by a ready public. But if a label is too aggressive and releases more songs by an artist than the audience desires, some of that music will likely get overlooked.
“If you’re Morgan Wallen and the world’s on fire, there’ll be a lot of people that listen to it,” says Brantley Gilbert, whose 10-song So Help Me God will become a 15-track project with the April 21 release of a deluxe edition. “But depending on where somebody is in their career, a lot of these cats, if you release a 15-, 20-song album, you may have a few die-hards roll all the way through it, but you end up burning a lot of songs.”
Those die-hards are the core audience for an artist, and steadily releasing music helps keep them focused, even if a concurrent radio campaign satisfies more passive customers with a lone song from that artist that stays in rotation for over a year.
“People are listening at an alarming rate to a lot of music,” ERNEST says. “Giving them a chunk is like giving them a playlist for a month or two, depending on how long they want to listen.”
Feeding the demand can be accomplished in more incremental ways than when physical product was dominant. In another era, labels typically released entire albums and picked one single to work to radio, hoping to generate sales for the entire project. Now, a lone track can create interest, and there’s no requirement to immediately capitalize with a full album that may not quite connect.
“It’s a song-by-song world now,” says Robold. “You’re just sort of stacking songs on top of one another. That way, an EP, it sort of introduces fans to this artist, not in such a huge dose. But it hopefully just gets more fans to say, ‘OK, I like this artist,’ and continue to feed that fan base and grow it.”
The projects with 30 tracks or more by Wallen and others are high-profile releases that have definite short-term appeal. Under the old model, they carried long-term risks. When vinyl double albums became a late-’70s/early-’80s fad, two-disc projects by the likes of Willie Nelson and Bruce Springsteen worked like bonus entries in a streak of ongoing successes. On the other hand, double sets by Elton John, The Electric Light Orchestra and Dan Fogelberg were followed by commercial drops one or two albums later, likely signaling that fans had gotten their fill of those particular acts. Thus far, there’s no sign that stuffing 30-plus songs into an album has adversely affected Wallen or others.
“It’s a fair question: Are you kind of super-saturating the market?’ ” Culbertson asks. “Really the amount of data that we have access to, we can tell if that is happening or if there’s kind of a cooling-off effect. Right now, it’s not a concern at all.”
That may partially be because music fans no longer have to purchase music they don’t like. When buyers had to pay for the entire album, it likely damaged the artist’s brand if the collection failed to meet expectations. Now the buyer/streamer doesn’t end up forking over money for music that doesn’t connect, and the consumer therefore doesn’t necessarily feel burned. But it often takes longer for artists to get a full investment from the audience.
“It’s difficult to break artists, but it always has been,” notes Robold. “When people’s only option was to buy a CD, if you had something working, it was a pretty good sort of level of comfort that people would be spending the 12 bucks to buy that CD. Now it’s literally micro-pennies, and it’s building it song by song. That’s really, really tough, but when artists connect, there’s still nothing like it.”
Morgan Wallen’s new album, One Thing at a Time, didn’t need 36 songs to reach No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart (dated March 18)— but the sprawling tracklist certainly didn’t hurt. The country singer’s third studio album notched 501,000 album equivalent units in its first week of release, according to Luminate, the biggest week of 2023 and one of the largest debuts in recent months.
One Thing at a Time undoubtedly benefited from its stats-padding length, but it still would have dominated the Billboard 200 had Wallen and his label, Big Loud Records, opted for an average length. With the bottom 18 tracks accounting for 36% of the album’s total on-demand streams, if One Thing were a single-CD, 18-track release, Billboard estimates it would have moved about 360,000 units last week — putting it well ahead of the No. 2 album, SOS by SZA. The 10 most popular tracks amounted to 41.8% of the album’s streams, with the track “Last Night” alone accounting for nearly 9% of the 36 tracks’ aggregated streams.
In fact, an 18-track One Thing at a Time would have bested most recent No. 1 albums in their debut weeks, including Lil Baby’s It’s Only Me (216,000 units), SOS (318,000 units), Metro Boomin’s Heroes & Villains (185,000 units) and Tomorrow X Together’s The Name Chapter: TEMPTATION (161,000 units). (That’s assuming One Thing at a Time would have sold the same number of CDs and digital albums with half as many songs.) Only two recent albums, Her Loss by Drake and 21 Savage (404,000 units) and Taylor Swift’s Midnights (1.58 million units), had better debut weeks than the hypothetical, 18-track One Thing at a Time.
One Thing at a Time is part of a curious paradox in current recorded music, as the widespread adoption of streaming services has caused artists to release single tracks more often while releasing increasingly lengthier albums, too. While the album is waning in popularity, it remains a vital artistic statement and commercial event.
The trend of longer albums runs counter to the experimentations of the early days of digital music. When Napster arrived in the late ’90s, many people believed file-sharing marked the death of the album format. In the ’00s, as consumers increasingly purchased individual tracks at online stores like Apple’s iTunes, labels experimented with the new paradigm. In 2005, Warner Music Group and Elektra Records founder Jac Holzman launched a digital-only label, Cordless Music, that released music exclusively in “clusters” of three or more songs instead of albums or singles. In 2010, country star Blake Shelton released two six-song EPs — called “six paks” — rather than a single 10- or 12-track album.
Today, streaming dominates music consumption and impacts how artists and labels package music. Album sales are lower than ever, but album lengths have never been longer. Because fans can stream an unlimited amount of music for a fixed price, artists can add songs knowing that a longer album equals more streams. And because streams tend to account for far more of an album’s chart position than downloads and purchases, artists have an incentive to keep people listening.
The result has been “track creep,” a consistently rising number of songs on popular albums. In 2022, the top 10 albums on the year-end Billboard 200 chart averaged 19.1 tracks and 69.9 minutes. The top album, Bad Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Ti, has 23 tracks and runs 81 minutes. Un Verano Sin Ti is a product of the streaming age: Physical album sales account for just 1.1% of its album equivalent unit sales compared to 97.5% for streaming. Track creep is made easier considering that many albums, such as SOS and Drake’s 21-track Certified Lover Boy, don’t have physical versions.
Changes in how albums are counted for the Billboard 200 can probably help explain some of the track creep: In 2014, the year Billboard began incorporating streams into the Billboard 200 chart, the top 10 albums averaged 13.2 tracks and 51.9 minutes, meaning album lengths have increased by about six tracks and 18 minutes in the last eight years. (Here, Billboard counts only studio albums and excludes soundtracks and Broadway cast recordings, which are filled with score and instrumental tracks.)
In 1992, when CD sales began to dominate recorded music revenues, the top 10 albums averaged 11.9 tracks and 51.1 minutes. Garth Brooks had two of the four 10-track albums in the top 10 — Ropin’ the Wind and No Fences — and the longest, Totally Krossed Out by hip-hop duo Kriss Kross, had just 15 tracks. Albums — particularly in the country genre — often topped out at ten tracks, a limit set by record labels for paying mechanical royalties to music publishers.
In 1977, when the vinyl LP ruled the industry, the top 10 albums averaged 10.3 tracks and 45.1 minutes, and half of them had fewer than 10 tracks. The longest, Stevie Wonder’s double album, Songs in the Key of Life, had fewer tracks — 17 — than half of 2022’s top 10 albums. The top album of 1977, Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, ran only 39 minutes — a full half-hour shorter than the average length of 2022’s top 10 albums. (In the 1977 top 10, Billboard included the soundtrack to A Star Is Born, which had only 11 tracks. That’s compared to 32 tracks for the Frozen soundtrack, the top album of 2014.)
One Thing at a Time might not need 36 tracks to top the Billboard 200, but having more songs means the album gets more streams and generates greater royalties. The least-popular 18 songs amassed 170.3 million on-demand streams in the album’s debut week. If those 18 tracks were released as a separate album — similar to the way Guns N’ Roses released Use Your Illusion volumes 1 and 2 simultaneously in 1991 — it would have been the No. 2 album of the week. Additional tracks provide diminishing returns but can contribute meaningfully to a successful record. Wallen’s previous album, the 32-track Dangerous: The Double Album, has received about 22% of its total track consumption — streams plus downloads — from its less-popular half. For a label that invests heavily in marketing and promoting an album, track creep can improve the return on each release.
Something the One Thing album has that single tracks and EPs lack is the oomph surrounding their marketing and promotion. In the wake of Napster, people may have underestimated the album’s ability to be an event unto itself. Single tracks get the attention of both fans and streaming services’ algorithms, but neither has the promotional impact of releasing a full album. As long as a label is driving awareness to a new release, why not give fans a few more songs?
Plus, artists don’t release albums as frequently as they used to. In the late ‘70s, artists often put out an album every year. Today, an artist will take two or three years — and often longer — between albums. Putting out longer albums could help labels make up for these widening gaps, with the caveat that only superstar releases tend to merit the kind of sprawling length seen in the form of recent releases by Wallen, Drake and others.
This kind of full-court press also serves to prolong — and boost — the success of individual tracks that would fade more quickly without an album attached. Eight of the 36 tracks on One Thing at a Time were released prior to the album’s street date and putting up strong numbers on their own. Still, their streams increased 89% the week of the album’s release. Four of the 8 tracks ended up in the Billboard Hot 100. In its sixth week on the Hot 100, Wallen’s single “Last Night” shot from No. 5 to No. 1 after a 53.5% jump in streams. Three other previously released tracks — “One Thing at a Time,” “You Proof” and “Thought You Should Know” — broke into the top 10 of the Hot 100.
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