Billboard Lists
05/16/2025
Swift is the only woman on the list, which also includes seven male solo artists, two bands and one choral group.
05/16/2025
Hamilton: An American Musical this week becomes the first original cast album to log 500 weeks on the Billboard 200. The album debuted at No. 12 on the chart dated Oct. 17, 2015, which was the highest debut for a cast album in more than 50 years. It peaked at No. 2 in July 2020, which was the highest ranking for a cast album since Hair topped the chart for 13 weeks in 1969.
Hamilton logs its 500th week on the chart just one month after the album was elected to the National Recording Registry in its first year of eligibility.
Lin-Manuel Miranda, who wrote the book, music and lyrics for Hamilton, has been showered with honors for his masterwork. He won two Tonys (best original musical score and best book of a musical), a Grammy (best musical theatre album) and the Pulitzer Prize for literature. The show’s creative team (Miranda, Thomas Kail, Alex Lacamoire and Andy Blankenbuehler) was even honored at the Kennedy Center Honors.
Miranda also won a Primetime Emmy (outstanding variety special, pre-recorded) in 2021 as a producer of a Disney TV adaptation.
To mark Hamilton’s 500-week chart achievement, we have prepared this list of the 10 cast albums with the most weeks on the Billboard 200 (which dates to March 1956). Hamilton is one of just two shows on the list where a solitary songwriter wrote both music and lyrics for the show. The other: The Music Man, written by Meredith Willson.
Alan Jay Lerner & Frederick Loewe are the only songwriter(s) with two albums in the top 10 – My Fair Lady and Camelot. Lady gave us such standards as “I Could Have Danced All Night” and “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face.” Camelot spawned “If Ever I Would Leave You” and “How to Handle a Woman.” Both shows had the same female lead – the incomparable Julie Andrews.
Here are the 10 cast albums with the most weeks on the Billboard 200.
Because of how the Billboard 200 chart is now compiled, where streaming activity is blended with album sales and track sales, albums tend to spend a longer time on the list thanks to continued streaming activity. The chart began utilizing streaming information in its methodology in December 2014. Previous to that, the chart was based solely on traditional album sales.
Also, a lengthy tracklist with multiple popular songs can help accrue large streaming totals, so albums like Hamilton (with 46 tracks) benefit from the continued weekly streams of their long tracklists.
Further, older albums (known as catalog albums; generally defined today as titles at least 18 months old), were mostly restricted from charting on the Billboard 200 from May 25, 1991-Nov. 28, 2009. Since then, catalog and current (new/recently released) albums chart together on the Billboard 200. As a result, older albums now regularly spend hundreds of weeks on the chart.
Man of La Mancha, 167
Bobby Vinton turns 90 today, having made his mark on the Billboard charts over the years. The singer, who gained the nickname “The Polish Prince,” had four No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 and three top 10 albums on the Billboard 200. Vinton holds a special footnote in pop culture history: He had […]
12/27/2024
Perry produced some of the biggest and best hits on the Hot 100 in the ’70s and ’80s.
12/27/2024
Richard Perry, one of the great record producers of the 1970s and ’80s, died on Tuesday Dec. 24 at age 82. Like such contemporary producers as Jack Antonoff, Greg Kurstin, Finneas and Daniel Nigro, Perry was nearly as well-known, at least among pop obsessives, as the artists he worked with. No producer can guarantee a […]
Dance music can often really complex — with all the styles of music that fall under the umbrella term and the countless sounds, artists, fans, parties, opinions and cities that make up the global culture and community we usually just refer to as “the scene.” It’s also quite simple, when one considers that what’s ultimately […]
12/10/2024
Our favorite albums from a year filled with country crossovers, traditional country-tilted albums and projects that highlighted the songwriting talents of both artists and songwriters.
12/10/2024
Cult classic in your eardrums.
Well, that was fast. Wicked has been making box-office history since it opened on Nov. 22. The long-awaited film adaptation of the 2003 Broadway musical has already grossed $372.9 million worldwide, a total topped by only three other films that were based on Broadway musicals.
Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo star in the film, which was directed by Jon M. Chu, whose hit-studded résumé includes a previous film adaptation of a Broadway musical, the 2021 movie version of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s breakout hit In the Heights.
Seven film adaptations of Broadway musicals appear on Box Office Mojo’s list of the top 1,000 films in terms of lifetime worldwide grosses. That counts Mamma Mia!, a film adaptation of the 2001 stage musical built around ABBA music, but not its Cher-featuring sequel Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again, on the grounds that the latter was really just a sequel to a hit movie, not a Broadway musical. (The sequel did astonishingly well, with a worldwide gross of $395.6 million.) Of course, not all sequels are guaranteed to become box-office successes. Grease is here, but its 1982 sequel, Grease 2, which grossed just $15 million worldwide, didn’t come close. (Michelle Pfeiffer, the star of Grease 2, is represented on this list with Hairspray.)
Wicked Part Two is due for release on Nov. 21, 2025. Will it follow its predecessor to box-office glory? If it does, Chu will join Rob Marshall as the only director with two films on this list; Marshall directed both Chicago and Into the Woods.
One disclaimer about this list right at the top: You can’t really compare box-office grosses of films from different eras. The biggest blockbusters of earlier eras simply can’t match the grosses of today’s hits. (It’s not just your imagination that ticket prices are much higher than they used to be.) The Sound of Music has grossed $159.5 million worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo – not enough to make their list of 1,000 top-grossing films. But that 1965 adaptation of the 1959 Broadway musical is one of the biggest hits in film history.
Other film adaptations of Broadway musicals that have grossed more than $50 million worldwide, but not enough to make the list, include Dreamgirls ($155.5 million), the 2021 version of West Side Story ($76 million), My Fair Lady ($72.7 million) and Funny Girl ($52.2 million).
Here are the seven top-grossing film adaptations of Broadway musicals. All appear Box Office Mojo’s list of the top 1,000 films in terms of lifetime worldwide grosses.
Hairspray
Image Credit: ©New Line Cinema/Courtesy Everett Collection
Our 100 favorite songs from a year where pop was really back in full effect.
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Rania Aniftos, Katie Atkinson, Katie Bain, Eric Renner Brown, Anna Chan, Stephen Daw, Kyle Denis, Angel Diaz, James Dinh, Thom Duffy, Josh Glicksman, Paul Grein, Lyndsey Havens, Elias Leight, Jason Lipshutz, Jessica Lynch, Meghan Mahar, Heran Mamo, Taylor Mims, Gail Mitchell, Danielle Pascual, Jessica Roiz, Dan Rys, Michael Saponara, Andrew Unterberger, Christine Werthman, Kristen Wisneski