Chart Beat
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Linkin Park reaches No. 1 on Billboard’s Alternative Airplay chart for the first time in more than a decade with “Lost,” which lifts to the top of the March 25-dated survey.
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“Lost” is the band’s 12th No. 1 and first since “Burn It Down,” which ruled for a week in August 2012. In between “Down” and “Lost,” the group charted eight titles, paced by the No. 7-peaking “A Light That Never Comes,” alongside Steve Aoki, in 2013.
The act first led in 2001 with “In the End,” kicking off a run of toppers that included six in a row in 2003-07.
With 12 No. 1s, Linkin Park ties Green Day for the second-most leaders in the Alternative Airplay chart’s 35-year history. Red Hot Chili Peppers lead all acts with 15.
Most No. 1s, Alternative Airplay:
15, Red Hot Chili Peppers
12, Green Day
12, Linkin Park
10, Cage the Elephant
10, Foo Fighters
10, Twenty One Pilots
8, U2
8, Weezer
7, Imagine Dragons
The song marks a return to the top of the charts for Linkin Park, whose frontman Chester Bennington died in 2017. “Lost” is the first posthumous No. 1 on Alternative Airplay for a lead vocalist since Nirvana‘s “You Know You’re Right” in 2002.
Concurrently, “Lost” leads Mainstream Rock Airplay for a second week. On the all-rock-format, audience-based Rock & Alternative Airplay chart, the song is No. 1 for a fifth week, with 9.7 million audience impressions, up 5%, according to Luminate.
On the most recent, March 18-dated multimetric Hot Hard Rock Songs tally, “Lost” led for a fourth week. In addition to its radio airplay, the song earned 2.8 million official streams and sold 1,000 downloads in the United States March 3-9.
“Lost” was recorded during the sessions for Linkin Park’s Meteora, a two-week No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in April 2003. Released at last in February, it will be on the 20th-anniversary reissue of the album, due April 7.
All March 25-dated Billboard charts will update on Billboard.com on Tuesday, March 21.
The long, long wait for De La Soul’s early catalog to reach digital retail and streaming services yields big results for the group on the newest round of Billboard charts. After years of internal label conflicts and issues with sampling clearances, the trio’s first six studio albums became available across digital retail and streamers on March 3 and generated a swell of activity. In the tracking week of March 3 -9, the De La Soul catalog registered 12.5 million official on-demand U.S. song streams in the week ending March 9 and sold 28,000 albums (both digital download and physical copies combined), according to Luminate.
The six studio albums had long been out of print on physical formats in the U.S., and all were reintroduced on CD, vinyl and cassette on March 3.
De La Soul is comprised of Kelvin “Posnudos” Mercer, Vincent “Maseo” Mason and the late David “Trugoy the Dove,” Jolicoeur, who died on Feb. 12 at age 54. The trio formed in Long Island in 1988 and released its debut album, 3 Feet High and Rising, on March 3, 1989, exactly 34 years before the early catalog’s digital and streaming debuts. In addition to 3 Feet High and Rising, the March 3 digital and streaming premiere included rollouts for De La Soul Is Dead (1991), Buhloone Mindstate (1993), Stakes Is High (1996), Art Official Intelligence: Mosaic Thump (2000) and AOI: Bionix (2001).
3 Feet is easily De La Soul’s biggest album for the week. The set returns to the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart at No. 8 with 26,000 equivalent album units. It previously spent 36 weeks on the list in 1989-90, including five frames at No. 1, helped by the hit single “Me, Myself and I,” which topped the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart for one week in June 1989, and follow-up hits “Say No Go” (No. 32) and “Buddy” (No. 18).
Most of the 3 Feet activity this week – 21,000 units – comes from album sales, with 4,000 in streaming-equivalent album units and the remaining 1,000 balance from track-equivalent album units. 14,000 of the sales sum came from vinyl LP sales alone — across multiple variants. (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.)
In addition to its top 10 re-entry on Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums, 3 Feet debuts at No. 4 on the Top Rap Albums chart, which began in 2004, and re-enters at No. 15 on the all-genre Billboard 200 for its 20th total week on the survey.
Unsurprisingly, “Me, Myself and I,” the trio’s biggest hit from their biggest album, leads the recap of De La Soul’s most streamed songs, with 1 million on-demand streams (including user-generated content [UGC], which does not count toward Billboard’s charts). More 3 Feet cuts, “The Magic Number,” which featured in the credits of the 2021 film Spider-Man: No Way Home, and “Eye Know,” rank second and third, respectively, with 618,000 clicks for the former and 511,000 streams for the latter. “Stakes Is High,” the title track of the trio’s 1996 album, lands in fourth place with 289,000 streams, while “Change in Speak,” another 3 Feet tune, rounds out the top five with 287,000 plays.
Lynyrd Skynyrd’s catalog gained in streaming and sales following the death of founding guitarist Gary Rossington March 5.
In the March 3-9 tracking week, the Southern rockers drew 16.4 million official U.S. streams, according to Luminate. That’s a 16% jump over the previous period of Feb. 24-March 2 (14.1 million).
Pacing the group, which was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2006, in overall volume for its songs was “Sweet Home Alabama,” from 1974’s Second Helping. The classic track, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s lone top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 (No. 8 peak, October 1974), earned 4.5 million streams March 3-9, up 7% from 4.2 million.
The song is followed by “Simple Man,” from 1973’s (Pronounced ‘Lĕh-‘nérd ‘Skin-‘nérd), at 3.9 million streams, a 5% boost. Next up, “Free Bird” from the same album, with a 11% jump to 3.1 million streams. The latter sports a slightly larger bump than the other songs, unsurprisingly: Rossington was the architect of the hit’s signature slide guitar riff.
A fourth Lynyrd Skynyrd song impacts the week’s top 2,000 streams in the U.S.: “Gimme Three Steps,” also from the 1973 LP, with 1.6 million streams, up 8%.
Those gains are enough for “Alabama,” “Simple” and “Bird” to hit Billboard’s Hot Rock & Alternative Songs and Hot Rock Songs charts (where older songs are eligible to appear if in the top half and with meaningful reasons for their resurgences). “Alabama” leads at No. 17, followed by “Simple” (No. 21) and “Bird” (No. 24). (“Simple” is in its third consecutive week on the ranking, having re-entered thanks to a viral American Idol audition with the song.)
All three titles also enter Rock Digital Song Sales, each with 1,000 downloads sold. In all, the band’s catalog moved 6,000 song downloads March 3-9, a vault of 103%.
The group’s All Time Greatest Hits concurrently scales Top Rock & Alternative Albums, bounding 28-15 with 11,000 equivalent album units earned, up 19%.
Rossington died March 5 at age 71. His cause of death has not yet been revealed. He had been the final surviving original member of Lynyrd Skynyrd, whose origins date to 1964.
There’s no end in sight for Miley Cyrus’ chart reign in Australia as the pop star snags a rare chart double.
Cyrus’ “Flowers” (via Columbia/Sony) enters a ninth week at the singles chart summit, published Friday (March 17), and its parent Endless Summer Vacation debuts at No. 1 on the national albums survey.
With Endless Summer Vacation topping the ARIA Chart, Cyrus earns a sixth top five title, and her third No. 1 — her first in a decade.
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Miley previously led the tally with Breakout (2008) and Bangerz (2013), which both spent one week in the top spot, ARIA Reports.
If Endless Summer Vacation hangs around for another week in the penthouse, Miley will equal a family record. Billy Ray Cyrus’ Some Gave All logged two weeks at No. 1 on the ARIA Albums Chart in 1992, though he hasn’t tasted life at the top ever since.
As “Flowers” extends its unbroken streak, “River,” the second single from her eighth and latest LP, starts at No. 22 on the ARIA Chart and two other tracks from it appear in the Top 100.
“Flowers” leads an unchanged ARIA top four ahead of cuts by PinkPantheress (“Boy’s a liar” via Parlophone/Warner), The Weekend (“Die For You” via Universal) and SZA (“Kill Bill” via RCA/Sony), respectively, while Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night” (Republic/Universal), from the U.S. country star’s latest, 36-track set One Thing At a Time, improves 6-5.
With the exception of Miley, no new releases debut on the top 50 of either main chart.
ARIA’s weekly charts are based on wholesale data collected from a combination of physical and digital retailers, and music-streaming services.
NCT 127 notch their fifth top 10-charting set on Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart (dated March 18) as Ay-Yo: The 4th Album Repackage debuts at No. 2. It’s the fifth total, and consecutive, top 10-charting effort for the pop ensemble. All five have peaked within the top two positions of the chart.
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NCT 127 last debuted on Top Album Sales with their fourth album, 2 Baddies, last year. That set was later repackaged, had three new bonus tracks added, and retitled as Ay-Yo. It initially reached streamers and digital retailers in January, but its CD release didn’t happen until March 3.
Ay-Yo sold 29,000 copies in the U.S. in the week ending March 9, according to Luminate. CDs comprise effectively all of Ay-Yo’s sales for the week. Like many K-pop releases, the CD configuration of Ay-Yo was issued in collectible deluxe packages, each with a standard set of items and randomized elements (covers, photocards, posters, stickers). The album was not available in any other physical format.
Also in the top 10 of the new Top Album Sales chart, Morgan Wallen, Kali Uchis, De La Soul, Macklemore and Daisy Jones & The Six all debut albums in the region.
Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart ranks the top-selling albums of the week based only on traditional album sales. The chart’s history dates back to May 25, 1991, the first week Billboard began tabulating charts with electronically monitored piece count information from SoundScan, now Luminate. Pure album sales were the sole measurement utilized by the Billboard 200 albums chart through the list dated Dec. 6, 2014, after which that chart switched to a methodology that blends album sales with track equivalent album units and streaming equivalent album units. For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both Twitter and Instagram.
At No. 1 on Top Album Sales, Morgan Wallen lands his second leader, and best sales week yet, as One Thing at a Time bows with 111,500 copies sold. That sum easily outpaces his previous highest sales frame when his last album, the chart-topping Dangerous: The Double Album, launched with 74,000 copies sold in January of 2021.
Kali Uchis logs her first top 10 and biggest sales week as her new studio set Red Moon in Venus enters at No. 3 with 28,000 sold. Of that sum, nearly 14,000 comprise vinyl sales – enabling the set to debut at No. 1 on the Vinyl Albums chart.
De La Soul’s debut album 3 Feet High and Rising, released in 1989, enters Top Album Sales at No. 4 after the long-out-of-print set was reissued on physical formats and made its digital retail debut on March 3. The album sold 21,000 copies in the week ending March 9, with almost 14,000 of that sum from vinyl LP sales (it bows at No. 2 on the Vinyl Albums chart). On the Billboard 200, 3 Feet High and Rising originally peaked at No. 24 in 1989 but hits a new high on the March 18-dated chart, where the set re-enters at No. 15, its first week in the top 20.
Macklemore’s new album Ben bows at No. 5 on Top Album Sales, selling 14,000 copies in its first week. It’s his second solo top 10-charting set, following Gemini in 2017, which peaked at No. 2. As one-half of Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, the duo visited the top 10 twice, with This Unruly Mess I’ve Made (No. 3 in 2016) and The Heist (No. 2 in 2012).
Four former No. 1s are next on Top Album Sales, as TOMORROW X TOGETHER’s The Name Chapter: Temptation falls 4-6 (11,000; down 23%), Taylor Swift’s Midnights dips 5-7 (10,000; down 8%), Gorillaz’s Cracker Island drops 1-8 in its second week (nearly 10,000; down 80%), and P!nk’s Trustfall slips 3-9 (9,000; down 47%).
Rounding out the top 10 is Daisy Jones & The Six’s Aurora, debuting at No. 10 with 8,000 sold. The album doubles as the soundtrack to the Amazon Prime Video series Daisy Jones & the Six, about the fictional rock band of the same name. The series stars Riley Keough (as the character Daisy Jones) and Sam Claflin (The Six member Billy Dunne), who sing lead vocals on the Aurora album.
In the week ending March 9, there were 1.979 million albums sold in the U.S. (up 6.9% compared to the previous week). Of that sum, physical albums (CDs, vinyl LPs, cassettes, etc.) comprised 1.524 million (up 3.4%) and digital albums comprised 455,000 (up 20.4%).
There were 667,000 CD albums sold in the week ending March 9 (up 9.9% week-over-week) and 847,000 vinyl albums sold (down 1%). Year-to-date CD album sales stand at 6.192 million (up 1.3% compared to the same time frame a year ago) and year-to-date vinyl album sales total 8.815 million (up 25.6%).
Overall year-to-date album sales total 18.65 million (up 7.8% compared to the same year-to-date time frame a year ago). Year-to-date physical album sales stand at 15.1 million (up 14.3%) and digital album sales total 3.549 million (down 13.1%).
DJ/producer John Summit and singer Hayla jump onto Billboard‘s Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart (dated March 18) at No. 9 with “Where You Are.” The first top 10 for both acts, “Where” starts with 1.9 million streams and 1,000 in download sales in the United States March 3-9, according to Luminate.
The collab amounts to Summit’s eighth total appearance, a run that began with “Deep End” (No. 26 peak, December 2020). Until now, that song and “Human,” featuring Echoes (March 2022), were tied as Summit’s highest-peaking tracks.
“Where” brings the second appearance for Hayla, the featured vocalist on Kx5’s “Escape” (No. 11, last June).
Concurrently, “Where” enters at No. 4 on the Dance/Electronic Digital Song Sales chart, matching the high of “Escape” last year. Summit scores his second and top-charting top 10, following “La Danza” (No. 10, March 2022).
On Hot Dance/Electronic Songs, “Where” debuts between two other newly-arriving collabs: Marshmello and Manuel Turizo‘s “El Merengue” (No. 6) and Oliver Tree and David Guetta‘s “Here We Go Again” (No. 10). The former, as previously reported, marks Marshmello’s first entry on a Billboard Latin chart.
“Here” is Oliver Tree’s second top 10, following “Miss You,” with Robin Schulz (No. 4, November). “Here” is Guetta’s landmark 20th top 10, the fourth-most among all acts since the chart premiered in January 2013; Kygo leads with 24, followed by The Chainsmokers (22) and Calvin Harris (21).
The track also extends Guetta’s record for the most Hot Dance/Electronic Songs hits overall to 75 (ahead of Kygo, with 61). “Here” bows with 1.8 million U.S. streams.
Further on Hot Dance/Electronic Songs, a fourth notable team-up, Martin Garrix and JVKE‘s “Hero,” leaps 33-17. The track earns top Streaming Gainer honors with 872,000 streams, up 48%, in the wake of the March 3 release of new remixes by DubVision and Space Ducks. The rank is the closest that “Hero” has been to its No. 13 best in two months.
Welcome to Billboard Pro’s Trending Up column, where we take a closer look at the songs, artists, curiosities and trends that have caught the music industry’s attention. Some have come out of nowhere, others have taken months to catch on, and all of them could become ubiquitous in the blink of a TikTok clip. This week: Fictional band Daisy Jones and the Six scores a breakout hit while also boosting the real-life Rock and Roll Hall of Famers that inspire them, Brent Faiyaz and Kali Uchis get different types of TikTok lifts, Halsey scores a valuable TV sync and much more.
Is Daisy Jones & The Six a Fake Band With a Real Hit on Its Hands?
Part of the fun of watching Daisy Jones & The Six, the Amazon Prime Video series based on Taylor Jenkins Reid’s best-selling novel, is hearing the fictional hits from the story’s fictional ‘70s rock band become very real as fully produced songs. “Look at Us Now (Honeycomb)” is used as a linchpin moment in the story of up-and-coming singer Daisy Jones and the Fleetwood Mac-inspired band that she’s about to join — a huge hit, but one that causes tension as its personal message gets warped for mass appeal. And with the soundtrack to the TV adaptation launching on Atlantic Records last month, fans of the book have finally been able to hear the song in full.
While episodes of Daisy Jones & The Six are still rolling out weekly, “Look At Us Now” has struck a chord with book readers, series watchers and music fans who simply stumbled upon the rollicking pop-rock track on a streaming playlist. Upon its mid-February release, the song earned over 84,000 U.S. on-demand streams for the week ending Feb. 16, according to Luminate. But once the show premiered and “Look at Us Now” was given a dramatic performance, those weekly streams grew 10 times in size — the song clocked 871,000 streams for the week ending Mar. 9.
“Look at Us Now (Honeycomb)” has the pedigree of a successful rock track: Marcus Mumford co-wrote the song, with artists like Blake Mills and Madison Cunningham contributed to the track, which features lead vocals by series stars Riley Keough and Sam Claflin. While a full series soundtrack — presented as a Daisy Jones & The Six album, Aurora — was released on Mar. 2, some of the songs have yet to appear in the show, and could receive streaming bumps in the coming weeks.
One wrinkle to the Daisy Jones & The Six story to keep an eye on: Reid has talked about finding inspiration for the series in Fleetwood Mac’s iconic 1997 performance of their song “Silver Springs,” as captured in their Billboard 200-topping live album The Dance. TikTok users have picked up on the connection between the show and the song, and streams of “Silver Springs” have also started to tick way up.
So, as a band invented as an homage to Fleetwood Mac eyes its first real hit, Fleetwood Mac — who returned to the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 in 2020 thanks to the TikTok revival of “Dreams” — may score another comeback as well. – JASON LIPSHUTZ
Booyah: “Jackie Brown” Viral Dance Is the Cherry on Top for Brent Faiyaz’ Breakout Album
Fitting that as news of Quentin Tarantino’s last (and reportedly final) upcoming movie begins to make the rounds, we also have a new hit named after one of his best movies: “Jackie Brown,” a highlight from R&B singer-songwriter Brent Faiyaz’s hit 2022 Lost Kids/Venice/Stem set Wasteland. That album charted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and spawned nine hits on the Hot 100 – none of which were “Brown,” which is now spiking on streaming thanks to a TikTok dance challenge.
The challenge sees users reacting to the newly hissing and snapping beat of a sped-up remix of the song (courtesy of TikToker Sturdyyoungin), doing different types of back-and-forth shimmies in between the song’s spaced-out opening lyrics (“Only been a few hours, but it feel like days…”) The increased visibility for the song has helped it explode from under 1.3 million official on-demand U.S. streams the tracking week ending Feb. 16 to over 3.4 million the week ending March 9 – a rise of 174%, according to Luminate – which has helped Wasteland rebound on the Billboard 200 dated March 25, as it climbs back to No. 54. – ANDREW UNTERBERGER
‘You’ Love to See It: Halsey’s ‘Bells in Santa Fe’ Gets Penn Badgley Bump
Halsey’s 2021 album If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power was a bold, often brilliant departure for the pop star, and while the Capitol alt-rock project (produced by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross) earned critical acclaim, it also failed to produce any hit singles for the top 40 mainstay, with only “I Am Not a Woman, I’m a God” reaching the Hot 100 (peaking at No. 64). Fortunately, one of the album’s most harrowing tracks, “Bells in Santa Fe,” is getting a streaming bump a year and a half after the album’s release, thanks to Netflix’s smash psychological thriller You.
The nervy electro-pop song soundtracks a pivotal sequence in the new season of the Penn Badgley-starring hit, during a plot twist involving Marienne (Tati Gabrielle) in the eighth episode. Since the second half of You’s fourth season premiered on Mar. 9, daily U.S. on-demand streams of “Bells in Santa Fe” are way up — from around 9,000 streams per day prior to the new season being unveiled, to over 47,000 streams on Mar. 13, according to Luminate. Those streams will continue to accumulate as more fans of You reach the eighth episode and bust out their Shazam apps when they hear Halsey’s voice; meanwhile, Halsey will soon be onscreen herself, making their big-screen debut in the Sydney Sweeney-starring film Americana, which premieres at SXSW on Friday (Mar. 17). – JL
“Moonlight” Shines on Kali Uchís’ New LP
Rising R&B star Kali Uchis dropped the gorgeous slo-funk ballad “Moonlight” a week in advance of her March 3 Interscope album Red Moon in Venus, but the song is really taking off post-album release – with help, of course, from TikTok, where her breakthrough hit “Telepatía” first took off in 2021. Uchis has been promoting the song heavily on her account, even with an occasional wink: Her most popular video with “Moonlight,” with over 1.3 million likes, features her manually plastering posters advertising her new album onto an empty outdoor wall, with the caption, “‘You never promote your music’ im doing the best i can u guys.”
In any event, her efforts are paying off: Since sagging in popularity after its first couple days of Red Moon’s release, “Moonlight” has been steadily rising in official on-demand U.S. streams from March 5 (562,000) to March 13 (867,000). It’s got a ways to go to match the breakout success of “Telepatia,” but it’s got the vibe, and it’s got the momentum – and a little promotional elbow grease goes a long way. – AU
Q&A: Michelle Rutkowski, operations manager of Milwaukee Radio Alliance, on What’s Trending Up in Her World
What’s been a trend in alternative that’s intrigued you thus far this year?
I don’t know if “intrigued” is the right word for it, but so far in 2023, the alternative chart looks like a time capsule. Some of the biggest records at the format so far this year have been from Linkin Park, Depeche Mode, Fall Out Boy, Weezer and All Time Low. While it’s great to have so much new music from heritage artists, the alternative format needs to provide balance by continuing to seek out, embrace and expose the next generation of superstars, in order to remain relevant to our audience.
As the music industry has evolved over the years, how have you seen your listenership and their interests change?
Now more than ever, our audience is looking for a way to connect to the music. The pandemic starved us of our ability to see live music, or to meet our favorite band. There is so much passion for alternative music, and providing our audience with meaningful experiences that bring them closer to the music is what it’s all about.
What do you think is the most common misconception about alternative music today?
That it is defined by a singular sound! Great alternative stations find a way to weave in all of the textures and sounds that the genre encompasses. Folk, punk, rock, electronic — they all belong here, and they all can blend and flow together well with the right understanding of their nuances and the right musical connective tissue.
Fill in the blank: the alternative trend that will define the rest of the year is ___________.
Lovejoy. seriously. That’s it. That’s the trend. At least I hope it is!! – JL
Season’s Gainings: We’ll Always Love Big Poppa
March 9 is a date burned into the mind of every hip-hop fan old enough to remember 1997, when Christopher Wallace, a.k.a. The Notorious B.I.G., was tragically shot to death in Las Vegas at age 24. The annual wave of nostalgia and remembrances for Biggie on the date of his passing is usually enough to produce a small-but-noticeable bump in his consumption, with official on-demand U.S. streams of his catalog up from just over 3 million to nearly 3.7 million that Thursday – a gain of 21%, according to Luminate – with his massive Ready to Die hit “Big Poppa” rising enough to even make an appearance on that day’s Spotify Daily Top Songs USA chart. – AU
There are 29 debuts on the March 18-dated Billboard Global 200 and 25 of those come from Morgan Wallen. The hit parade doesn’t stop there, with Wallen breaking ground among country – and all – artists on Billboard’s flagship global chart.
On top of Wallen’s 25 debuts, he adds five re-entries. More, four of his tracks hold over from last week’s chart. All of that adds up to 34 placements on this week’s Global 200, more than any artist has ever simultaneously charted in the list’s two-and-a-half-year lifespan. Taylor Swift previously held the record, with 31 songs on the Nov. 27, 2021, list in the wake of the release of her country-pop rerecording Red (Taylor’s Version).
Wallen’s total streaming figure and record-breaking hold on the chart are unqualified triumphs for any artist and especially so for country acts. Since launching in September 2020, the Global 200 has had 125 instances of an artist charting 10 or more songs at once, but only three of those belong to a current core country artist – in each case Wallen. He landed 19 songs on the Jan. 23, 2021-dated tally and 10 the following week. His new album, the Billboard 200-topping One Thing at a Time, sparks his latest chart haul, just as the arrival of his prior LP, Dangerous: The Double Album, yielded his big weeks on the Global 200 two years ago.
To find a full-on country act other than Wallen with a noteworthy robust one-week sum, we arrive at Luke Combs, who totaled six songs on the Nov. 7, 2020-dated Global 200. There have been 591 counts of an artist with six or more titles on the Global 200, spread among 65 distinct acts, but just 11 by two artists – 10 by Wallen and one by Combs – among country artists.
Country music has long struggled to find crossover success internationally. The genre is native to the United States, headquartered in Nashville and driven in large part by U.S.-based country radio, while often honoring authenticity above all else. That means that hometown (and in the case of these charts, home-country) pride goes a long way and could make exporting to Asia, Europe, South America and beyond difficult.
Wallen’s own chart entries perhaps prove that point. His song titles alone are specifically American, referencing Ford trucks (“F150-50”), Tennessee (“Tennessee Numbers” and “Tennessee Fan”) and the particulars of a certain baseball team’s near-championship run from 25 years ago (“’98 Braves”). Those songs, and most others from his latest album, storm the Global 200 powered by domestic streams but miss out on the Billboard Global Excl. U.S. chart.
Of Wallen’s 34 Global 200 entries, just one appears on Global Excl. U.S., where “Last Night” debuts at No. 103. It’s his first song to ever hit that tally, and though it’s a debut worth celebrating, it’s dwarfed by the track’s No. 5 rank on this week’s Global 200 (and No. 1 status on the U.S.-based Billboard Hot 100, where Wallen achieves his first leader). Further, it’s just the second song by a country act (excluding Swift), to appear on Global Excl. U.S.. The other was Combs’ “Forever After All,” which hit No. 105 for one week before falling off, while peaking at No. 4 on the Global 200 in the first of 38 weeks on the chart.
Among songs on both of this week’s global charts, the average streaming breakdown is 25% domestic and 75% international. Wallen’s “Last Night” is all the way at one end of that spectrum, with 84% U.S., well more than three times the average and distinctly separated from even the next highest-U.S. share, Nicki Minaj’s “Red Ruby Da Sleeze,” with 65%. One Thing at a Time’s 36 songs go even further, averaging out to 88%. Hip-hop has its own noted difficulty spreading outside the U.S., making Wallen’s more extreme lack of international streaming even more stark.
Wallen’s drastically stateside lean falls in line with the near-total lack of country consumption outside the U.S., but there are small caveats. “Last Night” is on two of Billboard’s Hits of the World charts, at No. 6 on Australia Songs and No. 10 on New Zealand Songs. Oceania has historically been a friendly non-U.S. market to country acts, even supplementing Morgan’s top 10 appearance with Zach Bryan’s “Something in the Orange” at No. 23 on the former chart. Next week, Wallen will play two arena shows each in Sydney and Melbourne alongside ERNEST, Hardy, and Bailey Zimmerman, before returning to North America for a supersized stadium tour.
Like Wallen, most country acts don’t play many concerts outside of North America. Australia and London have been welcoming, but barring major pop crossover stars like Swift or Shania Twain, genre artists remain focused on honing their U.S. fan bases. As the premier country superstar of the streaming era – a democratized and globalized evolution of a previously segmented music industry – Wallen’s ballooned presence on Billboard’s global charts could be the foot in the door for Bryan, Combs, Zimmerman, and others to test the boundaries of international music consumption.
Twenty-five years after coming up short of their ultimate goal, the ’98 Braves are scoring more wins.
Morgan Wallen’s “’98 Braves” is a bittersweet ode to Major League Baseball’s Atlanta Braves, who won 106 regular-season games in 1998 — a single-season best over the franchise’s century-and-a-half history (including its eras as the Milwaukee and Boston Braves) — but didn’t win the World Series that year. The track debuts on the March 18-dated Billboard Hot 100 at No. 27 (a fitting number when it comes to baseball).
Morgan, who co-wrote the song with John Byron, Josh Miller and Travis Wood, sings to his long-lost love, “Just like that season, girl, you and me didn’t end with a ring on a hand.”
The track also starts at No. 11 on Hot Country Songs and No. 56 on Country Airplay – where it’s one of six songs from Wallen’s new 36-cut album that, released March 3, launches as his second No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, with the largest streaming week ever for a country title. It also boasts the biggest week by equivalent album units for any album, among all genres, in 2023: 501,000 in the United States through March 9, according to Luminate.
Concurrently, the LP’s “Last Night” becomes Wallen’s first No. 1 on the Hot 100. He also claims five of the top 10 – becoming the first core country act to infuse half the top 10 in a single week – and sends all 36 songs on the set onto the Hot 100, rewriting the record for the most simultaneous entries in the chart’s history.
“’98 Braves” starts with 15.6 million official streams and 1,300 sold – as well as 891,000 in radio airplay audience, a notable sum given that it’s not being actively promoted by Republic/Big Loud Records to radio; the new album’s title cut is being worked to country and bounds 36-25 on the Country Airplay chart, joining “Last Night” (41-29), which is being promoted to pop and adult radio and ranks at No. 32 on Pop Airplay and No. 40 on Adult Pop Airplay.
Unsurprisingly, Atlanta’s Country Airplay reporters WKHX and WUBL are leading the way at radio on “’98 Braves.”
“We think it’s a great song,” says Mike Moore, program director of Cumulus-owned WKHX. “It talks about our hometown team and we’re about to start baseball season. What’s not to like?”
“‘’98 Braves’ hits at the heart of country music: It’s about a love that couldn’t make it through to the end, like the ’98 Braves,” muses Meg Stevens, WUBL pd and senior vp of programming for iHeartMedia Atlanta. “The song is well-crafted story with so many great lines, like, ‘If we were a team and love was a game, we’d have been the ’98 Braves.’ We’ve had great feedback. Listeners – longtime Braves fans – love Morgan. It’s a no-brainer for us.”
The song’s inherent fandom and heartbreak – The ’98 Braves swept the Chicago Cubs in the National League Division Series before falling in the NL Championship Series to San Diego (“As fate would have it, that Atlanta magic got put out by them damn Padres,” Wallen rues in it) – is authentic. Co-writer Miller “grew up in that ’90s era when they were so good and baseball was my life. Chipper Jones was my childhood hero and I always wore No. 10 playing ball because of him. I’ve got the rookie cards, the autographs, the whole nine. I believe Morgan pulls for the Braves and grew up playing ball, too.”
No surprise then that Miller, with Byron and Wood, worked his favorite player, among other ’98 Braves, into the song’s clever lyrics: “Between them Big Three pitchers, Andruw (Jones) and Chipper, it was gonna be hard to keep up with the Joneses.”
Despite a rich history of baseball hits in the musical field – Bruce Springsteen’s “Glory Days,” John Fogerty’s “Centerfield,” Alabama’s “The Cheap Seats,” Kenny Rogers’ “The Greatest” (with a shoutout to pop-rockers The Outfield) – Miller says that those weren’t his inspiration for “’98 Braves.” The team itself was – and perhaps its creation helped spark championship Atlanta magic after all.
“I think I was singing in the shower when I came up with the, ‘If we were a team, and love was a game, we’d have been the ’98 Braves’ hook,” he recalls. “I think I had just been watching a lot of Braves games and felt nostalgic. The idea kinda just fell on me. I threw it in my phone in May 2021, we wrote it in June 2021, Morgan cut it soon after – and the Braves won their first World Series in 25 years after that.” (“Sidenote,” Miller shares, “I was able to take my dad to game five.”)
Miller – who also co-penned Bebe Rexha and Florida Georgia Line’s “Meant To Be,” which notched a record 50 weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart – remembers that he, Byron and Wood were subsequently batting around song ideas. “When I finally got to [‘’98 Braves’] in my phone,” he says, they “were both like, ‘Yep, that’s what we’re doing.’ I definitely wrote it on the right day with the right guys. They’re a couple of my favorites and handled that idea with care.”
Also fans of the song? The ’23 Braves.
Despite its journey-is-the-destination theme – and since the Braves are only a year removed from winning it all (as they did in Atlanta in 1995, adding to World Series titles won in Milwaukee in 1957 and Boston in 1914) – the song seems a strong bet to be in the lineup when Wallen’s One Night at a Time World Tour, set to run through Oct. 7 (four days after MLB’s postseason is scheduled to begin), hits the home of the Braves June 2.
“It’s incredibly cool to have a chart hit written about the Braves,” says Derek Schiller, Atlanta Braves president and CEO. “We are looking forward to hearing Morgan Wallen play it live when his tour comes to Truist Park.”
Kali Uchis scores her first top 10 success on Billboard’s Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart as Red Moon in Venus debuts at No. 2 on the list dated March 18. The set, released March 3 via Interscope Records, starts with just over 55,000 equivalent album units earned in the week ending March 9, according to Luminate.
Album sales comprise just over half the 55,000-unit starting sum, with 28,000 units from traditional album sales. Within that group, 14,000 of those album sales were sold on the vinyl format. The five-figure sum there prompts a No. 1 debut for Venus on the Vinyl Albums chart.
27,000 of Venus’ first-week total comes from streaming-equivalent album units, which represents 35.5 million official U.S. on-demand streams of the album’s songs. Track-equivalent album units, meanwhile, account for the negligible units left. (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 mentioned, Venus is singer-songwriter Kali Uchis’ first top 10 result on Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums. She previously charted with 2018’s Isolation, which peaked at No. 17 in 2018.
Elsewhere, Venus likewise begins at No. 2 on the Top R&B Albums chart and at No. 4 on the all-genre Billboard 200. Venus is her second visit to the top 10 on the former list, after Isolation debuted and peaked at No. 4. On the latter, Venus secures her first top 10 and easily resets her highest career peak. Isolation, her prior best showing, topped out at No. 32. Kali Uchis also claims another album on her Billboard 200 history, the Spanish-language Sin Miedo (Del Amor y Otros Matrimonios). The set, released in November 2020, reached No. 52 on the Billboard 200 and No. 3 on the Top Latin Albums chart.
Red Moon in Venus contains the previously released track “I Wish You Roses,” which achieved a No. 28 peak on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart last month and re-enters the Hot R&B Songs chart at a new peak of No. 16 this week. Two more Venus cuts show on the latter list thanks to the album debut: “Moonlight” (No. 14) and “Fantasy,” featuring Don Toliver (No. 23).