State Champ Radio Chart Beat
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Slow and steady wins the race for Tems, whose “Free Mind” reaches No. 1 on Billboard’s R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart. The single tops the tally, rising 2-1, dated Nov. 12 in its 33rd week on the list, the second-longest climb to the summit in the chart’s 30-year history.
“Mind” rolls to its coronation with 19.2 million in audience in the week ending Nov. 6, according to Luminate.
As “Mind” reigns for the first time in its 33rd week on the list, it shuffles the leaderboard for the longest wait for a song to reach No. 1 on the R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay list. “Mind” is now second in that count, behind only the 35-week journey for R. Kelly’s “Step in the Name of Love,” which completed its trek in December 2003. Among women, Tems takes the mark from Rihanna’s “Needed Me” and its 25-week travel to the top.
Here’s an updated look at the songs with the most weeks needed to reach No. 1 on R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay:
Weeks to No. 1, Song Title, Artist, Date Reached No. 1
35, “Step in the Name of Love,” R. Kelly, Dec. 6, 2003
33, “Free Mind,” Tems, Nov. 12, 2022
31, “You,” Lloyd featuring Lil Wayne, Feb. 17, 2007
29, “I Wanna Know,” Joe, April 1, 2000
29, “Snap Yo Fingers,” Lil Jon featuring E-40 & Sean Paul of The YoungbloodZ, July 29, 2006
29, “There Goes My Baby,” Usher, Aug. 14, 2010
25, “Needed Me,” Rihanna
“Free Mind,” from Tems’ 2020 EP For Broken Ears, debuted on the R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay charted dated April 2, amid the Nigerian singer-songwriter’s increasing prominence in the U.S. In 2021, she featured on a pair of top 40 hits on the all-genre multi-metric Billboard Hot 100 – Wizkid’s “Essence,” which earned a boost after a Justin Bieber remix helped the song reach No. 9 that August, and on Drake’s Certified Lover Boy cut “Fountains,” which reached No. 26.
Her profile kept progressing thanks to a supporting turn alongside Drake on Future’s “Wait for U,” which debuted at No. 1 on the Hot 100 in April 2022. As fans’ turned to more of her catalog, “Free Mind” emerged as a favorite, sparking its official radio promotion to R&B/hip-hop and rhythmic formats. On Rhythmic Airplay, the song reached a No. 10 peak last month and slides 12-19 on the newest list.
Pentatonix celebrates its ninth top 10-charting effort on Billboard’s Top Holiday Albums chart as the vocal group’s latest release, Holidays Around the World, debuts at No. 6 on the Nov. 12-dated list. The act has been very successful on the tally through the years, having debuted a new album on the list nearly every year from 2012 onwards (missing only in 2013 and 2015).
All nine of Pentatonix’s chart entries have reached the top 10, with four hitting No. 1: That’s Christmas to Me (2014), A Pentatonix Christmas (2016), Christmas Is Here! (2018) and The Best of Pentatonix Christmas (2019).
Holidays Around the World starts with 4,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in the week ending Nov. 3, according to Luminate. Of that sum, traditional album sales comprise 3,500, while the remaining 500 units were generated largely by streaming activity of the set’s 12 songs.
Also debuting on Top Holiday Albums: Neil Diamond’s new compilation A Neil Diamond Christmas (No. 13), Anne Wilson’s The Manger (No. 45) and Louis Armstrong and Friends’ The Best of Louis Armstrong: 20th Century Masters The Christmas Collection (No. 47).
Meanwhile, the soundtrack to Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas continues at No. 1 for a 14th nonconsecutive week on top. The set earned 17,000 equivalent album units in the Oct. 28 – Nov. 3 tracking frame (up 89%) thanks to the album’s usual surge in popularity around Halloween (as the set is a hybrid Halloween and Christmas effort).
The Top Holiday Albums chart ranks the 50 most popular seasonal albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption as measured in equivalent album units. Units comprise album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Each units 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 Twitter and Instagram. The seasonal Top Holiday Albums returned for another festive season with the Oct. 22-dated list and will continue as part of Billboard’s weekly chart menu until it dashes away in January 2023.
Fred Again.. bows at No. 3 on Billboard‘s Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart (dated Nov. 12) with Actual Life 3 (January 1 – September 9 2022). The first entry for the London-based producer/singer/DJ (real name Fred Gibson) earned 7,000 equivalent album units in its first tracking week (Oct. 28-Nov. 3), according to Luminate.
The set also starts at No. 1 on the Heatseekers Albums chart, marking Fred Again..’s first leader on any Billboard list.
Additionally, Fred Again.. scores the top debut, at No. 18, on Billboard‘s multi-metric Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart with “Clara (The Night Is Dark),” which drew 1 million U.S. streams. It’s the fifth, and highest charting, Actual Life 3 track to make the tally so far, joining “Delilah (Pull Me Out of This)” (25-23 this week); “Bleu (Better With Time)” (50-33, nearing matching its No. 30 high on Oct. 1); “Kammy (Like I Do)” (48-45); and “Danielle (Smile on My Face)” (No. 45, Oct. 8).
In total, Fred Again.. has notched 11 Hot Dance/Electronic Songs entries, beginning with “Don’t Judge Me,” with FKA Twigs and Headie One (No. 23, February 2021). His collab with Swedish House Mafia, “Turn on the Lights Again..,” featuring Future, is his top-charting hit (No. 16, this August).
Tipper traipses onto Top Dance/Electronic Albums with Marble Hunting (No. 19). The set opens with 2,000 equivalent album units earned, nearly all from physical sales. It’s Tipper’s third trip to the chart and first in close to six years, after EP Flunked (No. 15, January 2017) and Forward Escape (No. 20, May 2014).
Returning to Hot Dance/Electronic Songs, Becky Hill and David Guetta return at No. 8 with “Remember,” sparked by new viral activity, the release of Hill’s solo versions and the rerelease of the original and Guetta’s VIP remix. It marks a new peak for the track, which previously reached No. 14 in July 2021 (ahead of Hill’s Only Honest on the Weekend album, released that August; it hit a No. 4 best on Top Dance/Electronic Albums the previous two weeks and ranks at No. 6 this week).
On Hot Dance/Electronic Songs, “Remember” becomes Hill’s second top 10 and Guetta’s 19th, the fourth-most among all acts dating to the chart’s January 2013 inception, after only Kygo (24), The Chainsmokers (22) and Calvin Harris (20).
Shifting to the Dance/Mix Show Airplay chart, Audien earns his fifth top 10 with “Drifting Away,” featuring Joe Jury, who (the verdict is in) gets his first (13-8). “Drifting” is drawing core-dance airplay on Music Choice’s Dance/EDM channel, WZFL (Revolution 93.5) Miami and iHeartRadio’s Evolution Network, among other supporters.
Plus, OneRepublic adds its sixth Dance/Mix Show Airplay top 10 with “I Ain’t Worried” (16-10). (The Dance/Mix Show Airplay chart measures radio airplay on a select group of full-time dance stations, along with plays during mix shows on around 70 top 40-formatted reporters.)
Godsmack scores its 12th No. 1 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Airplay chart – and its fifth in a row – as “Surrender” lifts to the top of the Nov. 12-dated survey.
The Sully Erna-fronted band’s streak of five No. 1s dates to “Bulletproof” in 2018. The group followed with “When Legends Rise” (2018), “Under Your Scars” (2019) and “Unforgettable” (2020) prior to its latest leader.
Godsmack breaks out of a three-way tie for the sixth-most No. 1s in the tally’s 41-year history. Shinedown leads all acts with 18.
Most No. 1s, Mainstream Rock Airplay18, Shinedown17, Three Days Grace13, Five Finger Death Punch13, Van Halen12, Godsmack11, Disturbed11, Foo Fighters10, Metallica10, Tom Petty (solo and with the Heartbreakers)10, Volbeat
Godsmack first appeared on Mainstream Rock Airplay with “Whatever,” which reached No. 7 in 1999. The band achieved its first No. 1 with “Awake” in 2001.
Concurrently, “Surrender” leaps 11-5 on the all-rock-format, audience-based Rock & Alternative Airplay chart with 3.3 million audience impressions, according to Luminate. “Surrender” ties the band’s highest rank on the list, which began in 2009, alongside “Love-Hate-Sex-Pain” in 2010 and “Unforgettable” in 2020.
“Surrender” also pushes 13-11 on the multimetric Hot Hard Rock Songs chart. In addition to its radio airplay, the song earned 484,000 official U.S. streams in the tracking week ending Nov. 3.
Lighting Up the Sky, Godsmack’s eighth studio album, is expected in February 2023. It’s the follow-up to 2018’s When Legends Rise, which debuted at No. 1 on the Top Rock & Alternative Albums chart that May and has earned 650,000 equivalent album units to date.
Welcome to Billboard Pro’s Trending Up newsletter, 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: Drake and 21 Savage’s Her Loss album spurs gains for its sample sources, pop radio embraces TikTok hits with ever-accelerating velocity, and Christmas season is officially underway on streaming.
‘Her Loss’ is Daft Punk’s Gain
collaborative album Her Loss has already proven a streaming juggernaut, even by the standards of the two hip-hop superstars. The 16 songs on Her Loss — a return to form for Drake, following his dance detour Honestly, Nevermind earlier this year — still make up the entire top 16 of the current iTunes songs chart this Wednesday (Nov. 9), and every song is in the top 25 of the daily Spotify tally. The set (released via OVO/Republic/Slaughter Gang/Epic) is doing so well, in fact, that its success is even rolling over to its samples.
Tracks like The Isley Brothers’ “Ballad For the Fallen Soldier,” The Diplomats’ “Real N—as” and Ginuwine’s “Lonely Daze” are all sampled on Her Loss, but the standout lift is of Daft Punk’s eternal dance floor classic “One More Time,” which gets slowed down and paired with percolating percussion on “Circo Loco.” The sample has caused some listeners to seek out Daft Punk’s 2000 original – and as a result, daily U.S. on-demand streams of “One More Time” increased 55% (from 117,000 to 182,000, according to Luminate) upon the Her Loss release, and stayed relatively high throughout the following weekend. Daft Punk may have officially broken up early last year, but it’ll be cause for celebration to have Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo’s names appear as songwriters again on the Hot 100 soon enough. — JASON LIPSHUTZ
Is Pop Radio Adopting TikTok Hits More Quickly?
The Sam Smith–Kim Petras collaboration “Unholy” reaching the top five of Billboard’s Pop Airplay chart shouldn’t be a surprise: the Capitol/EMI team-up has been a smash since its September release and last month becoming both artists’ first career Hot 100 chart-topper. Smith has been a top 40 fixture for years, and “Unholy” is built around a tenaciously catchy hook that’s ripe for the format. Yet “Unholy” — which climbs four spots to No. 5 on the Pop Airplay chart in the week ending Nov. 6 after a 17% gain in plays at U.S. monitored top 40 stations, according to Luminate — started off squarely in the TikTok-hit range, with Smith and Petras teasing the track weeks ahead of its official release; the fact that it’s already a top five Pop Airplay hit, in only its sixth week on the chart, suggests that the format is starting to react to and adopt these sort of viral singles more rapidly than ever before.
Smith may have been a proven commodity at pop radio — albeit mostly with songs significantly more stately than the cacophonous and sexed-up “Unholy” — but Steve Lacy certainly wasn’t, and his “Bad Habit” has become a top 40 smash for RCA after growing on TikTok and streaming, up one spot to No. 2 on Pop Airplay. Meanwhile, The Weeknd’s “Die for You,” a song from his 2016 Republic release Starboy that has recently been revived online, reaches a new high of No. 10 on Pop Airplay this week, taking 11 weeks for programmers to switch attention away from more recent Weeknd fare and toward the resurrected fan favorite. Other songs with TikTok origins, from Stephen Sanchez’s “Until I Found You” to Jax’s “Victoria’s Secret” to Rosa Linn’s “Snap,” are also making waves on pop radio, sitting comfortably on the chart alongside new A-list radio singles from artists like Taylor Swift and Rihanna.
TikTok’s influence on popular music has been common knowledge for years, but the current Pop Airplay chart nods to the fact that viral hits no longer require multiple months to cross over to radio listeners. Expect that pipeline to keep speeding up, and more songs like “Unholy” to make that leap in a matter of weeks. – J.L.
Eminem’s “Mockingbird” Flies Again
Just when you thought TikTok’s predilection for sped-up versions of distinctly low-energy older songs couldn’t get any stranger, here comes Eminem’s “Mockingbird.” The dolorous 2005 single (from the rapper’s fourth Aftermath/Interscope LP Encore), written as an ode to daughter Hailie, has picked up steam on the service thanks to multiple faster versions of the track making the rounds – inspiring everything from sing-along challenges to clips of teens taking care of their younger siblings. Whatever the logic behind the trend, the song has subsequently soared on streaming, going from 1.5 million official on-demand U.S. streams the week ending Oct. 6 to over 3.1 million streams four weeks later – a gain of 104%, according to Luminate. – ANDREW UNTERBERGER
20-Something Singer-Songwriter’s “QUARTER LIFE CRISIS” Strikes a Viral Chord
As All Time Low, Wheatus and countless other acts have discovered over the past couple years, there are few more proven recipes for TikTok success than a song that allows users to flash back to past photos – often providing contrasting juxtaposition with their more adult current look and life. Taylor Bickett is the latest artist to benefit from this. The unsigned Nashville singer-songwriter’s post-adolescent lament “QUARTER LIFE CRISIS” has inspired countless such clips with its “I swear sixteen was yesterday/ But now I’m closer to twenty-eight” lyrics. The 23-year-old’s clever track has already spiked 158% to nearly a million official on-demand U.S. streams for the week ending Nov. 6, according to Luminate — presumably making Bickett’s mid-20s look a lot brighter than they might have seemed when she wrote the song. – A.U.
Season’s Gainings: The Christmas Season Kicks Off Right on Time
If you had any doubt that the end of Halloween is now officially the start of pop music’s holiday season, the numbers this year make the trend pretty unmistakable. As we waved goodbye to Michael Jackson, Ray Parker Jr. and Bobby “Boris” Pickett this Nov. 1, holiday perennials from Brenda Lee, Bobby Helms and (of course) Mariah Carey all exploded with triple-digit percentage gains in official on-demand U.S. streams: “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” was up 176% to 615,000, “Jingle Bell Rock” up 185% to 602,000, and “All I Want for Christmas Is You” up a whopping 236% to nearly 1.3 million streams. In other words, if you’re getting dirty looks from your neighbor for already putting up your Christmas decorations this week, point them to the Spotify or Apple Music charts and let them know that you’re not starting early – they’re just already late. – A.U.
Ben Fuller achieves his first leader on Billboard’s Christian Airplay survey as “Who I Am” lifts to the top of the chart dated Nov. 12.
In the tracking week ending Nov. 6, the single drew 6.7 million audience impressions, according to Luminate.
The 35-year-old singer-songwriter co-wrote the song with Krystal Polychronis and David Spencer, the latter of whom co-produced it with Bryan Fowler. The track is slated to be on Fuller’s forthcoming debut LP.
Fuller, who hails from southern Vermont, grew up working on his family’s dairy farm and has been public about overcoming his battles with cocaine and alcohol addiction.
“Who I Am” topped Christian AC Airplay for two weeks in October.
“Three years ago this fall marks the time that I accepted Jesus into my heart,” Fuller told Billboard when ‘Who I Am’ first crowned Christian AC Airplay. “There’s nothing God can’t do, because with Him, anything is possible.”
Fuller claims the first No. 1 for an act in its initial visit to Christian Airplay since Katy Nichole’s “In Jesus Name (God of Possible)” began a nine-week rule in April. Fuller is the first male to achieve the feat since Cory Asbury’s “Reckless Love” controlled the survey for 13 frames starting in April 2018.
The Beatles’ Revolver album, first released in 1966, rushes to No. 1 on multiple Billboard charts following its deluxe expanded reissue on Oct. 28. The set re-enters at No. 1 on Top Rock & Alternative Albums, Top Rock Albums and Catalog Albums (all dated Nov. 12) – its first week at No. 1 on all three lists. Revolver also re-enters Top Album Sales, Vinyl Albums and Tastemaker Albums at No. 2.
On the Billboard 200, the former No. 1 – which spent six weeks atop the list in 1966 – re-enters the list at No. 4.
For Revolver’s special edition, the album was reintroduced and remixed in a variety of expanded formats and editions, including many with previously unreleased tracks. The range included a standard digital album priced at $9.99 in the iTunes Store up through a boxed set boasting four vinyl LPs and two seven-inch singles that sold for $200 or more, depending on the retailer.
All versions of Revolver, old and new, are combined for tracking and charting purposes. In the tracking week ending Nov. 3, Revolver earned 54,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. (up 1,963%). Of that sum, traditional album sales comprise 46,000 (up 6,346%).
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.
Top Rock & Alternative Albums, Top Rock Albums and Catalog Albums rank the week’s most popular rock and alternative albums, rock albums and catalog albums, respectively, by equivalent album units. (Catalog albums are older albums, generally those at least 18-months old.) Tastemaker Albums ranks the week’s best-selling albums at independent and small chain record stores. Vinyl Albums tallies the top-selling vinyl albums of the week.
Of Revolver’s 46,000 in album sales for the week, physical sales comprise 42,000 (18,000 on vinyl and 24,000 on CD) and digital album download sales comprise 4,000.
The rerelease of Revolver is part of the ongoing series of expanded reissues of select studio albums by The Beatles. It follows reissues of Let It Be in 2021 (first released in 1970), Abbey Road in 2019 (first released in 1969), The Beatles in 2018 (often referred to as the White Album, first released in 1968) and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 2017 (first released in 1967).
Taylor Swift’s Midnights holds at No. 1 on Top Album Sales for a second week, selling 114,000 copies (down 90%). In its debut frame a week ago, the set exploded atop the list with 1.140 million copies sold.
Grateful Dead’s Dave’s Picks, Volume 44: Autzen Stadium, U. of Oregon, Eugene, OR – 6/23/90 debuts at No. 3 on Top Album Sales with 22,000 sold. Dave’s Picks is the act’s continuing live archival release series, named for the group’s archivist, David Lemieux, that has been going strong since its first release in 2012. Releases in the series are issued exclusively on CD and in limited quantities.
On the Billboard 200 chart, Dave’s Picks, Vol. 44 debuts at No. 3 – marking the band’s 54th top 40-charting album on the list. The act continues to have the most top 40 albums among groups since the chart began regularly publishing on a weekly basis in March of 1956. The acts with the most top 40 albums on the Billboard 200 are: Frank Sinatra (58), Elvis Presley (58), Barbra Streisand (54), Grateful Dead (54) and Bob Dylan (51). (Thirty-six of Grateful Dead’s 53 top 40-charting albums are from the Dave’s Picks series.)
A trio of debuts is next up on Top Album Sales as Berner’s From Seed to Sale (14,000), Baby Keem’s The Melodic Blue (11,000) and Polyphia’s Remember That You Will Die (10,000) bow at Nos. 4-6, respectively. It’s the first top 10-charting set for the latter two acts, while Berner notches his second top 10 effort. The Melodic Blue was initially released a little over a year ago as a digital download album, but makes its belated debut on Top Album Sales following its vinyl LP release on Oct. 28; nearly all of its sales for the week were on vinyl. The album has yet to be issued on CD or any other physical format.
LE SSERAFIM’s ANTIFRAGILE falls 3-7 on Top Album Sales in its second week (7,000; down 65%).
Foo Fighters’ new greatest hits compilation The Essential Foo Fighters debuts at No. 8 on Top Album Sales with 7,000 sold. Of that sum, physical sales comprise 6,500 (3,500 on vinyl and 3,000 on CD) and digital album downloads comprise 500. The album also bows in the top 10 across a variety of other charts, including Top Rock & Alternative Albums, Top Rock Albums, Top Hard Rock Albums and Top Alternative Albums. The set also launches at No. 42 on the Billboard 200.
The 21-track The Essential Foo Fighters includes such hit songs as “All My Life,” “Best of You,” “Learn to Fly,” “Long Road to Ruin,” “Rope,” “The Pretender” and “Walk” – all of which hit No. 1 on the Alternative Airplay chart.
The Essential brand is the long-running compilation series from Sony Music’s catalog division, Legacy, and has charted dozens of charting titles on the Billboard 200 and Top Album Sales since the early 2000s from artists such as Bob Dylan, Michael Jackson, Britney Spears and Barbra Streisand.
The Essential Foo Fighters is the first in the Essential series to reach the top 10 on Top Album Sales. Previously, the highest-charting effort in the Essential series on Top Album Sales was The Essential Bruce Springsteen, when it debuted and peaked at No. 14 on the Nov. 29, 2003-dated chart.
The Essential Foo Fighters is the highest charting Essential album on the Billboard 200 since The Essential Michael Jackson rose to No. 31 on the Sept. 8, 2018-dated chart. The Essential Foo Fighters is also the highest debut from the Essential line since The Essential Leonard Cohen debuted and peaked at No. 13 on the Dec. 3, 2016 chart, following his death.
Harry Styles’ former No. 1 Harry’s House climbs 12-9 with a little over 6,000 sold (down 2%), while Demon Hunter clocks its fourth top 10 with the No. 10 arrival of Exile (6,000).
In the week ending Nov. 3, there were 1.618 million albums sold in the U.S. (down 42.1% compared to the previous week). Of that sum, physical albums (CDs, vinyl LPs, cassettes, etc.) comprised 1.237 million (up 46%) and digital albums comprised 381,000 (up 24.4%).
There were 621,000 CD albums sold in the week ending Nov. 3 (down 37.8% week-over-week) and 606,000 vinyl albums sold (down 52.3%). Year-to-date CD album sales stand at 29.021 million (down 7.1% compared to the same time frame a year ago) and year-to-date vinyl album sales total 32.574 million (up 3.7%).
Overall year-to-date album sales total 79.244 million (down 6.5% compared to the same year-to-date time frame a year ago). Year-to-date physical album sales stand at 62.049 million (down 1.6%) and digital album sales total 17.194 million (down 21%).
SZA stitches together her sixth top 10 hit on Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart as “Shirt” debuts at No. 4 on the chart dated Nov. 12. The single, released Nov. 4 through Top Dawg / RCA Records, begins in the top 10 of both the genre’s sales and streaming charts as well.
“Shirt” arrives with 20.3 million official U.S. streams registered in the week ending Nov. 3, according to Luminate, enough to prompt a No. 2 start on the R&B/Hip-Hop Streaming Songs chart. In the same period, the track sold 3,000 downloads and enters at No. 9 on the R&B/Hip-Hop Digital Song Sales list. In addition, the song drew 990,000 in radio audience in the week. It ranks outside the 50-position R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart, though most singles are driven largely by streams and sales in their debut weeks, as airplay is traditionally the slowest-moving metric.
With “Shirt,” SZA nets her sixth top 10 on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs. Here’s a look at her collection:
Song Title, Artist (if other than SZA), Peak Position, Peak Date“All the Stars,” with Kendrick Lamar, No. 5, Feb. 24, 2018“Good Days,” No. 3, Jan. 23, 2021“No Love,” with Summer Walker, No. 5, Nov. 20, 2021“I Hate U,” No. 1 (one week), Dec. 18, 2021“Beautiful,” DJ Khaled featuring Future & SZA, No. 10, Sept. 10, 2022“Shirt,” No. 4 (to date), Nov. 12, 2022
Beyond its impact on SZA’s chart ledger, “Shirt” returns another R&B veteran – Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins – to the top tier thanks to his co-write and co-production credits. The hitmaker, whose resume includes work on defining hits such as Brandy and Monica’s “The Boy Is Mine” and Destiny’s Child “Say My Name,” cracks the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs’ top 10 for the first time since January 2008. Then, he produced and co-wrote Keyshia Cole’s “Shoulda Let You Go,” featuring Amina, which exited the top 10 that month after having reached No. 7 a few weeks earlier.
Elsewhere, “Shirt” debuts at No. 3 on the Hot R&B Songs chart and gives SZA her 16th top 10 there.
For the first time since 2016, Meghan Trainor appears on Billboard’s Streaming Songs chart. “Made You Look,” from Trainor’s new album Takin’ It Back, starts at No. 49 on the Streaming Songs list dated Nov. 12.
In the tracking week ending Nov. 3, “Look” earned 9.3 million official U.S. streams, a 79% boost, according to Luminate.
The slightly unconventional rise – songs from new albums don’t often increase in streams in their second week, and Back bowed Nov. 5 – is thanks in part to virality for “Look” on user-generated content platforms such as TikTok.
Trainor last appeared on Streaming Songs on the tally dated Sept. 24, 2016, when “Me Too” appeared at No. 41.
She boasts eight total entries on the ranking, paced by 10-week No. 1 “All About That Bass” in 2014.
Concurrently, “Look” vaults 95-63 in its second week on the multi-metric Billboard Hot 100, as the chart’s greatest gainer in streaming for the week. It’s Trainor’s highest ranking entry since “No Excuses” debuted and peaked at No. 46 in March 2018. (In between “Excuses” and “Look,” Trainor made the ranking for one week in February 2020 with the Nicki Minaj-featuring “Nice to Meet Ya,” which peaked at No. 89.)
“Look” also debuts at No. 37 on Adult Pop Airplay.
Back debuted at No. 16 on the Billboard 200 dated Nov. 5 and spends its second week on the survey at No. 40 with 15,000 equivalent album units earned.
