Chart Beat
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Playboi Carti’s “Sky” returns to No. 1 on the TikTok Billboard Top 50, with Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” creeping even closer to the top of the list, rising 3-2 on the ranking dated Dec. 9. Tetris Kelly:Playboy Carti returns to the top while Mariah Carey inches her way closer to […]
Playboi Carti’s “Sky” returns to No. 1 on the TikTok Billboard Top 50, with Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” creeping even closer to the top of the list, rising 3-2 on the ranking dated Dec. 9.
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The TikTok Billboard Top 50 is a weekly ranking of the most popular songs on TikTok in the United States based on creations, video views and user engagement. The latest chart reflects activity Nov. 27-Dec. 3. Activity on TikTok is not included in Billboard charts except for the TikTok Billboard Top 50.
“Sky,” featured on Playboi Carti’s 2020 album Whole Lotta Red, is a monthly visitor to the top reaches of the TikTok Billboard Top 50 – and on TikTok as a whole prior to the chart’s September 2023 inception – thanks to start-of-the-month trends highlighting the song’s “Wake up/ It’s the first of the month” lyric. In the spirit of the holidays, some of the latest uploads even utilize a Christmas-themed remix of the tune as it vaults to the top.
The Dec. 9 survey is the second time “Sky” has ruled the chart, following the tally dated Oct. 7. It returned at No. 2 on the Nov. 11 list.
“Sky” isn’t the only song whose appearance on the latest TikTok Billboard Top 50 is spurred by first-of-the-month trends, either. Bone Thugs-N-Harmony’s “1st of Tha Month” returns at No. 27, after debuting at No. 22 on the Nov. 11 chart. That’s no accident, of course; the “Wake up/ It’s the first of the month” lyric from “Sky” is itself an interpolation of the chorus of “1st of Tha Month.”
The ascension of “Sky” concludes a three-week run at No. 1 for Mitski’s “My Love Mine All Mine,” which drops to No. 3. It’s also passed by Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” which continues its march to the top of the ranking with a new peak of No. 2.
Continuing with the weekly holiday-themed check-in, Carey leads five holiday tunes on the Dec. 9 tally, up from four the previous frame. Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” joins “All I Want for Christmas Is You” in the top 10, leaping 18-9, and Wham!’s “Last Christmas” rises 14-13. The Ronettes’ “Sleigh Ride” jumps 46-30, one spot behind a debut in Michael Buble’s “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” at No. 29.
The week’s top debut on the TikTok Billboard Top 50 belongs to Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman,” which starts at No. 12. Released in 1981, the experimental electronic track has gone viral after a Nov. 22 upload of a user looking at a photo of her great-great-grandmother who had died 100 years before. The trend centers on the lyrics “Well, you don’t know me/ But I know you,” with creators using the song to delve into their own family histories, discuss supernatural happenings and strange coincidences, and more.
Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love” also sports a sizable start, appearing on the chart for the first time at No. 14. The song has gone through multiple waves of virality over the years, with the most recent trend highlighting a filter that slowly ages the user all the way to 2073, 50 years in the future.
And though it’s far from a newcomer on the viral TikTok scene, Conan Gray’s “Heather” also debuts, bowing at No. 23. It originally went viral on the platform in 2020, eventually vaulting to a No. 46 peak on the Billboard Hot 100 that September. Why’s it back now? The song’s opening lyrics reference Dec. 3, the closing day of the latest TikTok Billboard Top 50’s tracking week.
See the full TikTok Billboard Top 50 here, which also features debuts from Michael Jackson, Jennifer Lopez, Rod Wave and more. You can also tune in each Friday to SiriusXM’s TikTok Radio (channel 4) to hear the premiere of the chart’s top 10 countdown at 3 p.m. ET, with reruns heard throughout the week.
Last week, Billboard revealed its year-end Boxscore charts, ranking the top tours, venues and promoters of 2023. That coverage included analysis of the new wave of genre diverse artists crashing stadium stages and in turn, our charts. This week, we are breaking down the year’s biggest tours, genre by genre. Here, we continue with R&B.
R&B has some humongous contemporary stars – Beyoncé, Bruno Mars, Usher and more – but in the last decade, it’s been too reliant on those stars to keep it afloat. The graph below shows how the genre has experienced severe spikes and drops, often victim to the scheduling whims of a small group of headliners.
In 2016, when Beyoncé mounted The Formation World Tour, R&B spiked from 3.5% of the overall top 100 gross, to 8%. But in 2019, after Bruno Mars wrapped his globe-conquering 24K Magic Tour, its share plummeted from 11.5% to 2.7%.
In 2023, R&B is hitting from all sides. The established superstars named above – Beyoncé, Bruno Mars, Usher – were all active, joining forces with next-gen headliners such as SZA and The Weeknd. More than that, Lionel Richie, New Edition and others are harnessing their legacies to build the next phase of their touring careers. All of that builds to the genre’s biggest share of the top 100 tours, dating back more than a decade.
That mix of classic artists and ascendant stars bodes well for the genre, even when its biggest icons are off cycle.
Keep reading to check out the top 10 highest grossing tours by R&B artists, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore. All reported shows worldwide between Nov. 1, 2022 – Sept. 30, 2023, are eligible. Here, we define R&B acts as artists who have recently featured on Billboard’s Top R&B Albums or Hot R&B Songs charts.
Lionel Richie
Image Credit: Adam Bettcher/Getty Images
Republic Records has a historic week on the Billboard 200 albums chart (dated Dec. 9), as the label holds the top six titles. It is the first time a label has claimed the entire top six, or even top five, since the chart combined its previously separate mono and stereo album charts into one all-encompassing chart in August 1963.
On the Dec. 9 chart, the Nos. 1-6 titles are: Taylor Swift’s 1989 (Taylor’s Version) (rebounding 2-1 for its third non-consecutive week in the lead); Drake’s For All the Dogs (released via OVO Sound/Republic, falling to No. 2); Swift’s Midnights (6-3); Morgan Wallen’s One Thing at a Time (Big Loud/Mercury/Republic, 5-4); and Swift’s Folklore (9-5) and Lover (8-6). (All of the top six albums have spent time at No. 1.)
For good measure, Republic has a seventh title in the current top 10, as Swift’s chart-topping Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) jumps 17-10.
Many albums on the chart, including Swift’s, see gains encouraged by retail promotions for Black Friday and holiday shopping.
Earlier in the week, it was reported that Swift, with five titles in the top 10, became the first living artist with at least five of the top 10 titles in a single week since August 1963.
Republic’s triumph with the top six adds luster to an already big year for the company, as it finished 2023 at No. 1 on Billboard’s three leading year-end label rankings: Top Labels, Billboard 200 Labels and Billboard Hot 100 Labels. It was the third year in a row Republic led all three year-end rankings.
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. For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both X, formerly known as Twitter, and Instagram.
The Contenders is a midweek column that looks at artists aiming for the top of the Billboard charts, and the strategies behind their efforts. This week (for the upcoming Billboard 200 dated Dec. 2), a South Korean group hopes to get the early holiday gift of its first No. 1 album, with the debut of its fourth studio LP.
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ATEEZ, The World Ep.Fin : Will (KQ/RCA/Hello82): Eight-piece South Korean boy band ATEEZ has been swelling in stateside popularity since its 2019 debut. Though it has yet to find major airplay or streaming success in the U.S., the group has scored three top 10 albums on the Billboard 200 — most recently reaching No. 2 on the chart with July’s The World EP.2 Outlaw, held off only by Morgan Wallen’s One Thing at a Time blockbuster in the midst of its non-continuous 16-week run atop the chart.
Next week, the group may get its chance at the top spot. Ep.Fin is available for purchase in a whopping 33 different physical editions — 26 CD packages and seven vinyl packages – all with collectible branded merchandise inside. Among the 33 iterations are exclusive CDs and vinyls for Barnes & Noble, Target and Walmart, — all with retail-exclusive randomized photo cards inside. – Of the seven vinyl LPs, six are color vinyls (four “bone” colored, one magenta and one light blue, while one is a picture disc).
The group will again face stiff competition from a strong reigning champion: Taylor Swift, whose 1989 (Taylor’s Version) has spent three of the last five weeks atop the Billboard 200, and which is still posting weekly unit totals well into the six digits. Still, the time is now for ATEEZ. With a long-anticipated Nicki Minaj album due this Friday (Dec. 8) and the holiday season kicking into full swing shortly after, this upcoming chart week is likely its best remaining chance of finishing the year with a No. 1 album.
Michael Bublé, Christmas (143/Reprise/Warner): Bublé’s holiday perennial always starts to make noise on the charts around this time of year — and indeed, on the current week’s Billboard 200 (dated Dec. 9), the album pokes its head into the top 10 for the first time, jumping 24-9. Bublé leads the Christmas rush of albums expected to storm the chart in the weeks to come – but unlike on the Billboard Hot 100, where Mariah Carey (and now Brenda Lee) have ruled each year since 2019, a holiday album has not actually reached the No. 1 spot on the Billboard 200 since Pentatonix’s A Pentatonix Christmas reigned for two weeks in January 2017.
Speaking of Pentatonix, along with some of the usual returning suspects – Mariah Carey’s Merry Christmas, Nat King Cole’s The Christmas Song, Vince Guaraldi Trio’s A Charlie Brown Christmas – there’s also a new collection from the a cappella group, The Greatest Christmas Hits, which may challenge its usual holiday contender, The Best Pentatonix Christmas. (The former rates at No. 23 on this week’s chart.) There’s also Cher’s new Christmas album, up 66-46 this week, which should benefit from perhaps the closest thing this holiday season has to a new breakout hit: “DJ Play a Christmas Love Song,” which has performed well on streaming, while also topping both radio and sales charts.
Peter Gabriel, I/O (Real World): Peter Gabriel’s days as a major pop hitmaker are now about 30 years in the rearview, but the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer (both solo and as part of Genesis) still commands attention with his new album releases – and I/O is his first since 2011’s New Blood. The album is available in 2CD, digital download and 2CD/blu-ray editions, as well as separate vinyl LP offerings of its “bright-side” and “dark-side” mixes. Gabriel also employed the unusual strategy of releasing a new song from the album every full moon in the 11 months leading up to its release – ultimately releasing all 12 tracks in advance.
After their first collab reached the top 20 on Billboard’s Hot Latin Songs chart, Kali Uchis and Karol G linked up for “Labios Mordidos,” which debuts at No. 10 on the chart dated Dec. 9. Karol G extends her record for the most female pairings to debut in the top 10 in the list’s 37-year-old history, with five all-women collaborations.
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“Labios Mordidos” is the third preview from Uchis’ fourth studio album Orquídeas, the all-Spanish-language set due Jan. 12. The Colombian now repays the favor, after “Me Tengo Que Ir” — from Karol G’s No. 1 album Mañana Será Bonito (Bichota Season) — placed the pair at No. 19 on Hot Latin Songs last August.
“Labios Mordidos” which translates to “Bitten Lips,” arrives at No. 10 on the strength of streaming activity. The song logged 5.6 million official U.S. streams on latest tracking week of Nov. 24-30, according to Luminate. The seven-figure sum sparks a No. 9 start on the Latin Streaming Songs chart.
Further, “Labios” also begins with 500 downloads sold in the same period, enough for a No. 3 arrival on Latin Digital Song Sales.
With “Labios,” Uchis ups her career top 10 count on Hot Latin Songs to two and her first equal-billed top 10 debut. The new top 10 follows the eight-week ruler “Telepatía” (2021). The ranking blends weekly streaming, sales, and radio airplay data.
Karol, meanwhile, collects her 25th top 10, extending her second-most among women, trailing only Shakira who leads with 35 top 10s. Plus, as“Labios” debuts on the upper tier, la bichota captures her fifth all-women pair-up top 10 debut, the most by a woman in the history of Hot Latin Songs, which dates to 1986. Only one other female pair has racked up a top 10 launch without Karol G as one of the collaborators, Becky G and Natti Natasha with “Sin Pijama” in May 2018.
Here’s the full list of top 10 debuts by two co-billed women:
Debut Date, Debut Position, Title, ArtistMay 5, 2018, 10, “Sin Pijama,” Becky G & Natti NatashaNov. 23, 2019, No. 1, “Tusa,” Karol G & Nicki MinajApril 10, 2021, No. 9, “El Makinon,” Karol G & Mariah AngeliqFeb. 26, 2022, No. 1, “MAMIII,” Becky G & Karol GMarch 11, No. 1, “TQG,” Karol G & ShakiraDec. 9, No. 10, “Labios Mordidos,” Kali Uchis & Karol G
Elsewhere, “Labios” gives Uchis her second all-Spanish-language entry on the all-genre Billboard Hot 100, at No. 97. For Karol, it becomes her 29th career entry – still the most for a Latin female artist with all-Spanish-language songs.
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Busta Rhymes bounds back onto Billboard’s Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart as his new effort, Blockbusta, debuts at No. 10 on the list dated Dec. 9. The set, released on The Conglomerate/Epic Records, becomes the rapper’s 10th top 10 album and extends his perfect streak among his original studio albums.
Blockbusta, which dropped on Nov. 24, earned just under 23,000 equivalent album units in the tracking week of Nov. 24 – 30, according to Luminate. Traditional album sales contribute 14,000 of the first-week total, with streaming activity in second place, at a little below 8,000 units – equaling 11.1 million official on-demand audio and video streams of the album’s tracks. The remaining 1,000 units come from track-equivalent album units (One unit equals the following levels of consumption: one album sale, 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams for a song on the album.)
As Blockbusta launches, it secures Busta Rhymes’ 10th top 10 on Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums. Of his 14 charted titles, the only set to miss the top tier was, perhaps ironically, the compilation The Best of Busta Rhymes, which charted for one week at No. 97 in 2001. With the list updating this week, here’s a full review of Busta Rhymes’ top 10 projects on Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums:
Album Title, Peak Position, Peak DateThe Coming, No. 1 (one week), April 13, 1996When Disaster Strikes, No. 1 (one week), Oct. 4, 1997E.L.E.: Extinction Level Event: The Final World Front, No. 2, Jan. 2, 1999Anarchy, No. 1 (one week), July 8, 2000Genesis, No. 2, Dec. 15, 2001It Ain’t Safe No More…, No. 10, May 3, 2003The Big Bang, No. 1 (one week), July 1, 2006Back on My B.S., No. 2, June 6, 2009ELE 2: The Wrath of God, No. 4, Nov. 14, 2020Blockbusta, No. 10 (to date), Dec. 9, 2023
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The new album has already spun off two singles that have charted on some Billboard radio charts. “Beach Ball,” with BIA, reached No. 29 on the Mainstream R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart in September, while “Luxury Life,” featuring Coi Leray, did one better, peaking at No. 28 on the same radio ranking last month.
Elsewhere, Blockbusta debuts at No. 6 on the Top Rap Albums chart and at No. 42 on the all-genre Billboard 200. Part of the latter’s fortunes are due to timing, with 10 Christmas or holiday-themed albums parked above it as the chart’s annual rush of holiday titles picks up steam as the season approaches.
Bobbi Storm debuts at No. 1 on Billboard’s streaming-, airplay- and sales-based Hot Gospel Songs chart (dated Dec. 9) with “We Can’t Forget Him.” It’s the Detroit native’s first entry on Hot Gospel Songs and the chart’s first No. 1 arrival in over a year since DJ Khaled’s “Use This Gospel (Remix)” featuring Kanye West […]
Three weeks after Victoria Monet claimed her first No. 1 single on a Billboard chart, the singer-songwriter adds a second chart-topper to her ledger as “On My Mama” tops the R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay list. The track, which led the Mainstream R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay tally for two weeks in November, ascends from the runner-up spot to lead the […]
Last week, Billboard revealed its year-end Boxscore charts, ranking the top tours, venues and promoters of 2023. That coverage included analysis of the new wave of genre diverse artists crashing stadium stages, and in turn, our charts. This week, we are breaking down the year’s biggest tours, genre by genre. Today, we begin with Latin.
Throughout the 2010s, Latin acts – here, defined as artists who primarily perform in Spanish – were consistently supporting players on the Boxscore charts. Strong supporting players, with generally a combined 3-6% share of the yearly top 100 tours’ total gross, but supporting, nonetheless. But as the many subgenres that comprise Latin music’s growing global footprint gained international recognition and popularity, acts from Puerto Rico, Colombia, Mexico and more returned from the pandemic with a strengthened touring audience.
Latin’s top-100 share rose from 5.3% in 2019 to 12.1% in 2022. That was thanks, in large part, to Bad Bunny’s record-breaking year atop the year-end Top Tours chart, plus fumes from Daddy Yankee’s farewell tour. In 2023, the genre dips to 11.5% in 2023. But in the absence of Bad Bunny’s $373.5 million from last year, Latin’s deepening bench picked up the slack to remain relatively steady, signaling the potential for even more growth in the years to come.
While reggaetón and pop acts continued to power Latin touring, 2023 marked the rise of regional Mexican music, on streaming services and on stages. Eslabon Armado, Fuerza Regida and Peso Pluma conquered Billboard’s global charts, while those acts, Grupo Firme and others were selling out arenas across the U.S. and Central America.
Scroll to check out the top 10 highest grossing tours by Latin artists, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore. All reported shows worldwide between Nov. 1, 2022 – Sept. 30, 2023 are eligible.
Carin Leon
Image Credit: Kevin Winter/Getty Images for Latin Recording Academy