State Champ Radio Chart Beat
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Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” from 1976, scored major gains in U.S. streams and sales amid the 50th anniversary of its namesake ship’s sinking, leading to its coronation on a Billboard chart for the first time.
In the week ending Nov. 13, the song drew 3.7 million official U.S. streams and sold 5,000 downloads, according to Luminate, marking increases of 140% and 328%, respectively, week over week. It returns to Billboard’s Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart dated Nov. 22 at No. 15. (Older songs are eligible for Billboard’s multimetric charts if ranking in the top half and with a meaningful reason for their resurgences.)
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The latter count pushes the song to No. 1 on Rock Digital Song Sales, marking its first placement atop any Billboard tally. It’s Lightfoot’s third leader on the list, after “If You Could Read My Mind” and “Sundown” in 2023, following Lightfoot’s death at age 84 that May 1.
Those two tracks also return to Rock Digital Song Sales, reflecting general interest in Lightfoot’s catalog beyond “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”; “Sundown” ranks at No. 6 and “If You Could Read My Mind” at No. 10, each with 1,000 sold.
In all, Lightfoot’s catalog drew 9.1 million on-demand streams Nov. 7-13, a gain of 67%. It also sold 7,000 song downloads, a vault of 285%.
“The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” hits new highs of No. 2 on Country Digital Song Sales and No. 4 on the all-genre Digital Song Sales chart.
The song was released on Lightfoot’s 1976 album Summertime Dream. It hit No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 9 on Adult Contemporary, while the album rose to No. 12 on the Billboard 200.
The 50th anniversary of the wreck of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald was Nov. 10. As chronicled by Lightfoot, the 729-foot long freighter sank in Lake Superior during a sudden storm. All 29 crewmen aboard died. After Lightfoot wrote the track, he became close to several of the victims’ family members.
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Billboard’s Dance Moves roundup serves as a guide to the biggest movers and shakers across Billboard’s many dance charts — new No. 1s, new top 10s, first-timers and more.
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This week (on charts dated Nov. 22, 2025), Calvin Harris and Jessie Reyez crown the Dance/Mix Show Airplay chart with “Ocean.” It becomes Harris’ 18th No. 1 at the format and Reyez’s first career No. 1 on any Billboard chart. Plus, chart moves for DJ Snake, Fred again.., Danny Brown and nate band.
Check out the key movers below.
Calvin Harris & Jessie Reyez
In July 2017, Jessie Reyez debuted on Billboard’s charts for the first time, thanks to her featured appearance on Calvin Harris’ “Hard to Love,” which debuted and peaked at No. 30 on Hot Dance/Electronic Songs. Now, eight years later, she reaches No. 1 on a Billboard chart for the first time, also thanks to a Harris collaboration.
Harris and Reyez’s “Ocean,” released Sept. 5 on Columbia Records, rises 3-1 on the latest Dance/Mix Show Airplay chart. It earns Harris his 18th No. 1 at the format and Reyez her first No. 1 on any Billboard chart.
Harris’ 18 No. 1s mark the second-most in the chart’s 22-year history. Here’s an updated look at the artists with the most No. 1s:
19, David Guetta
18, Calvin Harris
12, Rihanna
10, The Chainsmokers
8, Ellie Goulding
7, Anabel Englund
7, Madonna
7, Tiësto
“Ocean” is Harris’ second No. 1 of 2025, following “Blessings,” featuring Clementine Douglas, in July. Before that, he notched three leaders in 2024 (“Free,” “Lovers in a Past Life” and “Body Moving”). Harris has now spent 108 total weeks at No. 1 on Dance/Mix Show Airplay, extending his record.
Although this is her first No. 1, Reyez has had a steady presence on Billboard’s rankings since her chart arrival. She’s charted five songs on the Hot R&B Songs chart and earned radio hits on Alternative Airplay, Latin Airplay, Mainstream R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay and Rhythmic Airplay. Plus, her album Before Love Came to Kill Us reached No. 13 on the Billboard 200 in 2020.
DJ Snake
The Algerian-French DJ banks his third entry on the Top Dance Albums chart as his new album, Nomad, debuts at No. 7 with 6,000 equivalent album units earned, according to Luminate. His previous two entries, 2016’s Encore and 2019’s Carte Blanche, both hit No. 1. The new project includes collaborations with J Balvin, Travis Scott, Peso Pluma and Stray Kids, among others.
One of the album’s breakout tracks, “Tsunami,” featuring Future and Scott, debuts at No. 6 on Hot Dance/Electronic Songs. It earns DJ Snake his 12th top 10 on the chart. The J Balvin collab, “Noventa,” spent a week at No. 1 on Latin Airplay in October.
Fred again..
The superstar debuts two tracks on the Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart: “Beto’s Horns (Fred Remix)” with Argentinians CA7RIEL and Paco Amoroso (No. 15), and “Talk of the Town” with Sammy Virji and Reggie (No. 24).
The former becomes CA7RIEL and Amoroso’s first U.S. chart hit, following four entries on the Billboard Argentina Hot 100. “Beto’s Horns” was boosted by a mix with Ezra Collective. As for “Talk of the Town,” the song is a remix of Irish rapper Reggie’s 2022 track of the same name.
Both “Beto’s Horns (Fred Remix)” and “Talk of the Town” are part of Fred’s ongoing USB project — a concept beginning in 2022 that he’s called an “infinite album,” with new one-off mixes being released continuously.
Fred again.. has now charted 32 tracks on Hot Dance/Electronic Songs, all since 2021.
Danny Brown
The trailblazing rapper appears on Billboard’s dance charts for the first time, as his new album Stardust debuts at No. 25 on Top Dance Albums with 3,000 units.
Stardust marks a fresh sonic turn for Brown, who has long embraced experimenting with new genres and styles. The project features Brown’s signature raps and leans into EDM and hyperpop textures. It includes guest appearances from genre fixtures Frost Children, Jane Remover and underscores.
Prior to Stardust, Brown charted four albums on the Billboard 200 and two top five entries on Top Rap Albums.
nate band
The up-and-coming DJ claims his first career entry on Billboard’s charts as “Miss Your Body” debuts at No. 14 on Hot Dance/Electronic Songs. The track, released Oct. 17 via moshpit projects/Thirty Knots, opens with 1.1 million official U.S. streams.
The vocals on “Miss Your Body” are sung by Lily Kaplan, who’s credited as a cowriter and coproducer on the track. She previously wrote songs for Central Cee, Ice Spice, Lil Durk, Stormzy and $uicideboy$. She reached the Billboard Hot 100 as a cowriter and coproducer on Ice Spice and Central Cee’s “Did It First” (No. 51 peak, 2024).
Band has released two other songs on DSPs: “Drugs I Like” (plus a remix with AVELLO) and “Falling.”
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Last year, RAYE swept the BRIT Awards and established her presence in the U.S. with the 070 Shake-assisted top 40 hit “Escapism.” In 2025, the British singer-songwriter has proven that her star power is not dimming anytime soon, earning her first solo entry on the Billboard Hot 100 with “Where Is My Husband!,” which currently sits at a No. 58 high on the chart dated Nov. 22.
Co-written and co-produced with longtime collaborator Mike Sabath, “Where Is My Husband!” finds RAYE blending Motown-era soul, big band instrumentation and a funky, rapid-fire cadence into an irresistibly animated plea for her imagined spouse to arrive already. “I would like a big and shiny diamond that I can wave around/ And talk, and talk about it/ And when the day is here, forgive me God, that I could ever doubt it,” she proclaims in the bridge, which went viral as a snippet on TikTok ahead of the song’s Sept. 19 release. “Husband” also serves as the lead single for RAYE’s forthcoming sophomore studio album, which follows debut My 21st Century Blues. In addition to helping RAYE become the first artist to win six BRIT Awards in a single year, the project also earned her 2025 Grammy nominations for best new artist and songwriter of the year, non-classical.
“Instead of being like, ‘How are we going to follow [My 21st Century Blues] up?’,” we were like, “You just toured the whole world, and it looked and sounded like this,” Sabath says about the inception for “Husband.” “You want to look and sound like that more. How do we design for that?”
RAYE first performed the then-unreleased “Husband” as the opening number during her Glastonbury Festival set in late June, preparing the stage for months of hype across social media. After RAYE’s first TikTok of her performance garnered nearly two million views, she continued teasing the song in subsequent posts, often leaning into her humor or giving fans glimpses inside the recording studio. Now, just over two months since its release, “Husband” has hit No. 13 on the Billboard Global 200, her highest ranking since “Escapism” peaked at No. 7 in 2023.
Below, New York-bred producer-songwriter Mike Sabath, 27, goes deep with Billboard about the composition of “Husband,” working with RAYE in the studio, and how they finished the song just 11 days before its release.
How did “Where Is My Husband!” come together?
We had an idea of the space we wanted to play in. [RAYE] was super inspired by The Supremes, visually and textually, and I’ve had this sonic vision since [My 21st Century Blues] — we reached it a bit with “The Thrill Is Gone” and “Worth It.” She had been touring for eons, and I had been doing other things and my own artist stuff. We got a ski cabin at Big Bear [Lake] in California for 10 days, but it took us five days to figure out how to eat and drink water there. (Laughs.) We’re musicians, we cook up in a whole different way!
With the last album, it all came together through the live show, which expanded and unified the sonic realm by making it super orchestral and brassy. She brings that queen energy. It’s like Your Highness who wears no shoes.
[With “Husband,”] we reverse-engineered it from her live show. It started with a drum roll and these brass hits, then I tapped a keyboard groove on the MIDI [controller]. It’s easy to [complain about not having] live drums, but it’s so important to get the idea out in its most simple form. There’s always time to sonically improve something, but there’s not necessarily another time when that stroke of inspiration is there. Lyrically, I just let her do her thing; I Americanize things when I need to. I come in like, (Sings lyric.) “He should holler.”
When did you know “Husband” was complete?
We literally didn’t finish it until 11 days before it came out. We got the foundation in Big Bear, and then we ended up finishing it at a studio in Joshua Tree, including the bridge. I did the horns at that studio, and then I added strings when I got back home. RAYE added a bass player and some piano when she went to London.
I feel like deciding if a record is done before it’s mixed is just silly. The mix is such a part of the color and the setting of the record; it reveals and cleans things. After one of the early mixes, for example, I realized RAYE needed to record more backing harmonies on the pre-[chorus].
This record was super untraditional in the way that we did the lead vocal. In the verses, there’s no lead vocal; it’s just doubles on the sides. And that’s how we did [most of] the record. She kept trying to cut a lead and didn’t like it, so I had to figure out what the “lead” meant in this context and create what it would feel like using four to eight voices. We did it with Tony Maserati, who’s a legend, and the sweetest dude ever.
In the 11 days before the song came out, I flew to Australia thinking the record was done. I landed at 4 a.m. and ended up in the Uber on Mixstream with Tony, making significant changes to the record over the phone as I’m completely delirious. When I finally got to where I was staying, we were still mixing, but I could look at the water, which calmed me. Physical location is a really powerful perspective tool in mixing. The song also had a different ending.
What was the original ending?
RAYE loves as much drama as possible, so she made this whole extra ending. I was like, “This is such a potent song, we should just end it.” And she’s like, “I want to do this thing!” I’m always supportive, so I let that happen, and that ultimately revealed other things that helped finish the record anyway. The day before we turned the song in, she calls me as she’s going to sleep in London, like, “Mike, we have to remove the ending.” It was hilarious because we made this whole thing for her ending, which we ended up keeping for the new ending. It was like a side quest.
I produced a new ending on the phone with Tony, and it was f–king insane. But it worked. After we turned the song in, RAYE and I were like, “I don’t know about the master.” Something about it just wasn’t hitting. We pulled that version, but we had to send them the mixed version, so I texted Tony out of his sleep. He got out of bed, made some coffee, went into the studio in the middle of the night, and bounced the final files. And then we delivered the record 11 days before it came out.
Was there a sense of “This is a hit!” when you turned the song in?
My biggest songs have been songs that I’ve been most excited to play for people — and that was the case with “Husband.” When it was done, I knew it was different. I really liked it, but I didn’t know it was going to be a hit. They were going to put out a different song, and I really pushed for this. It wasn’t that hard because it was pretty clear at that point, but I was like, “You have to come back with the drum roll!” Also, [“Husband”] was just more done at that point.
Why do you think fans have latched on to the song so much?
The world really fell in love with her on the last record, so I think people wanted her to win. Also, I think a lot of people are looking for a husband. People want love; we’re humans, and people want a partner. That’s resonant in itself and probably why the bridge exploded first. And the song itself is just crazy. People want to hear real music s–t going on, and there’s all that happening in this record. It’s also the things that are intangible, too.
The whole journey with RAYE so far has been amazing. We started eight years ago, and to witness all of this and be a part of it has been beautiful. I’ve always been like, “You guys are sleeping on this girl!” She’s always been amazing. Generational artists don’t just pop up; they are trained and prepared for sustainability. [RAYE] is a generational artist, and I’m honored to be her friend.
A version of this story appears in the Nov. 15, 2025, issue of Billboard.
Tate McRae wrapped the Miss Possessive Tour in Los Angeles on Nov. 8. Since kicking off in March, the tour grossed $110.8 million and sold 1 million tickets over 77 shows, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore. It’s easily the biggest of McRae’s fast-growing career, quintupling the earnings of her previous tour, just one year ago.
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It’s another year in a successive growth pattern for McRae. She’s toured for the last four years, building upon each in every metric. She averaged 1,084 tickets per show in clubs on her reported dates from 2022, before scaling to 2,607 in 2023. Last year, she stretched to 5,999, before elevating to sold-out arenas, with an average of 13,480 tickets in 2025. This is the third consecutive year that she doubled her nightly ticket sales.
Compounded by surging demand and an ever-increasing ticketing market, McRae’s earnings grew even bigger. She’s up from a per-show average of $26,600 in 2022, to $96,800 in 2023, to $349,000 in 2024, and now to $1.4 million in 2025. She grew by 265%, then 261% and then again by 312%.
McRae’s busy touring schedule has complemented a nearly constant output of new music. I Used to Think I Could Fly was released in May 2022, followed by Think Later in December 2023 and So Close to What in February 2025.
McRae’s numbers have soared on a per-show basis, but she’s also added more dates to her schedule each year, creating exponential growth to her total figures. The Miss Possessive Tour is her first to sell more than a million tickets and gross more than $100 million, and she hadn’t come close before: The tour’s total attendance triples last year’s count of 336,000, and the total gross laps last year’s $19.6 million five times over.
The Miss Possessive Tour started on March 18 with one show in Mexico City before a string of Latin American festival slots. McRae played 26 shows in Europe ($27.9M; 359K tickets) and then 50 in the United States and Canada ($82.7M; 673K). Both regions were up, to say the least, from last year, with North America earning more than seven times its 2024 gross.
That global growth can be distilled to the local level. In New York, McRae has evolved from one show at Irving Plaza (1,200 capacity) in 2022, to two at The Rooftop at Pier 17 (7,494 tickets in 2023). She played her first solo headline show at Madison Square Garden in 2024 (12,458) and then played three in 2025 (41,503). She also had three arena shows in the Los Angeles area, selling 42,224 tickets at Kia Forum in Inglewood, Calif., up 612% from last year’s lone show at the Greek Theatre (5,930).
Over the course of three years, McRae has expanded her nightly reach by more than 5,300%. Fellow emerging pop stars have experienced similar growth in the last decade, but it hasn’t been quite as speedy. Both Billie Eilish and Dua Lipa kicked off their latest arena spectacles last fall, two years removed from the end of their previous tours. McRae, on the other hand, has fired off three tours in three years, with no more than six months in between any of them.
In the eight months since her latest album became her first No. 1 on the Billboard 200, she topped the Billboard Hot 100 alongside Morgan Wallen on “What I Want” and scored her first Grammy nomination with F1’s “Just Keep Watching.”
Now, McRae is preparing the deluxe release of So Close to What, set to drop on Friday (Nov. 21). It’s led by “Tit for Tat,” which debuted on the Hot 100 at No. 3 in October. In the year since the Miss Possessive Tour dates went on sale, she’s created enough new momentum to continue this growth into the latter part of the 2020s.
Trending on Billboard Lainey Wilson has been all over Wednesday night’s (Nov. 19) CMA Awards. Not only is she hosting, and not only did she kick the awards into high gear with a big country covers medley, but she’s also one of the night’s big winners, taking home album of the year for her acclaimed […]
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Venesti and Mike Bahía take “Difícile,” their first partnership, to No. 1 on Billboard’s Latin Airplay chart (dated Nov. 22), as the song rallies 13-1 in its 11th week.
“Difícil” soars to No. 1 on the overall Latin radio ranking with 8.24 million audience impressions earned in the United States during the tracking week of Nov. 7-13 (up 55%), according to Luminate. Leading the song’s radio surge are Univision stations KVVF in San José, Calif., KQMR in Phoenix, and KAMA in Houston.
“We are No. 1 on Billboard with Venesti!” Mike Bahía shared with Billboard. “Thank you for the invitation, my friend. I am grateful to Chappell [Warner Chappell Music Latin] for bringing us together, grateful to Luis Salazar, the producer, and Samantha Cámara, one of the composers I love collaborating with. Beyond happy, this is sooo cool, pure fuel.”
“I would like to thank God, first of, because we are No. 1 on Billboard,” Venesti adds. “Grateful to Billboard for their consistent love, my radio crew in the States, my incredible fans, my team, AP Global Music, and Mike Bahía for believing in the song.”
Bahía achieves his first No. 1 on the Latin Airplay chart with “Difícile.” Plus, he becomes the sixth act to earn their inaugural chart-topper in 2025, joining Kapo, benny blanco, The Marías, Gerardo Coronel ‘El Jerry,’ and Morat.
Venesti, meanwhile, banks his third champ, after “Umaye” and “No Es Normal,” with Nacho and Maffio, both one-week rulers in 2023 and 2024, respectively.
Elsewehere, “Difícile” reaches new heights on Latin Pop Airplay, as the song climbs 3-1 for its week atop. This also marks Bahía’s first No. 1 there.
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Kenshi Yonezu’s “IRIS OUT” extends its domination over the Billboard Japan Hot 100 to nine weeks, on the chart released Nov. 19.
Downloads and streams for the Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc theme declined this week, but karaoke jumped to 109% of the previous frame. It leads streaming and video views for a ninth consecutive week, and holds at No. 1 on karaoke for the sixth week in a row.
Debuting at No. 2 is timelesz’s “Steal The Show.” The title track of the group’s first single under its new lineup, released Nov. 12, sold 520,300 copies in its opening week to launch at No. 1 for sales, and enters at No. 17 for radio airplay. At No. 3, also new this week, is NMB48’s “Seishun no Deadline,” which sold 197,490 copies to bow at No. 2 for sales.
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Kenshi Yonezu and Hikaru Utada’s “JANE DOE” slips two spots to No. 4. The ending theme of the Reze Arc movie holds at No. 2 for streaming for the eighth straight week while remaining inside the top 10 for both video and downloads. At No. 5 is HANA’s “Blue Jeans,” which enters its 18th chart week with gains in video — up 105% from last week — and a slight uptick in karaoke.
Elsewhere on the Japan Hot 100, Gen Hoshino’s “Ikidomari” debuts at No. 22. The theme song for the film Hiraba no Tsuki opens at No. 1 for downloads, No. 22 for radio, No. 48 for streaming, and No. 83 for video.
The Billboard Japan Hot 100 combines physical and digital sales, audio streams, radio airplay, video views and karaoke data.
See the full Billboard Japan Hot 100 chart, tallying the week from Nov. 10 to 16, here. For more on Japanese music and charts, visit Billboard Japan’s English X account.
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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.
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This week: The hits keep coming for Olivia Dean after she makes her SNL debut, while Summer Walker’s latest offers a few streams to some R&B gems and a soul cult favorite gets a surprise viral hit.
Olivia Dean’s Ascension Continues, Thanks to Recent ‘SNL’ Debut
Olivia Dean sits in the top five of both the Billboard Hot 100 and Billboard 200 this week (charts dated Nov. 22). And, if her recent streaming numbers are any indication, she’s poised to continue soaring. According to early data provided by Luminate, Dean’s catalog earned 21 million official on-demand U.S. streams in the two-day period following her SNL debut (Nov. 16-17), marking a 23% increase from the streams her catalog pulled the week prior (Nov. 9-10). Following her Saturday Night Live performances of “Man I Need” and “Let Alone the One You Love,” Dean’s catalog was also up nearly 120% in U.S. digital sales, with over 2,600 digital downloads sold during Nov. 16-17.
“Man I Need,” which reaches a new peak of No. 4 on this week’s Hot 100, is also up 4% in streams post-SNL, earning 7.5 million official streams during Nov. 16-17. In that same time frame, “Man” sold over 1,000 U.S. digital downloads, marking an 89% jump from the 550 copies it sold during Nov. 9-10. “Let Alone” earned a much larger boost, soaring 44% to over 1.2 million official streams during Nov. 16-18, and leaping a whopping 1,465% to over 300 digital downloads sold during the same period.
Between her SNL debut, a recently announced four-night run at Madison Square Garden and the afterglow of her first Grammy nomination, the world simply can’t get enough of Olivia Dean and The Art of Loving. — KYLE DENIS
Streaming Audiences Say ‘Yes’ to Lift-Heavy Summer Walker Album
Singer/songwriter Summer Walker released one of the year’s most anticipated R&B albums on Friday (Nov. 14) with Finally Over It, third album in her acclaimed Over It trilogy. The 18-track, two-disc set was littered with guests — including big names like Chris Brown, Teddy Swims, 21 Savage and Doja Cat — but nearly as strewn with samples and interpolations from past R&B staples, with many of those originals seeing streaming bumps in the days following its release.
The biggest of the bunch was for “Yes,” the fan-favorite deep cut from Beyoncé’s 2003 solo debut LP Dangerously in Love. The song’s “First time I said ‘no,’ it’s like I never said ‘yes’” hook is borrowed for the intro to Walker’s obversely titled “No,” one of the set’s early streaming breakouts. According to early data provided by Luminate, “Yes” racked up 94,000 official on-demand streams over the first four days of Finally Over It‘s release (Nov. 14-17), nearly double the 48,000 it amassed in the equivalent four-day period the prior week.
Other bumps from the set were enjoyed by a decades-older R&B throwback (Roberta Flack’s 1978 Donny Hathaway duet “The Closer I Get to You,” interpolated in Walker’s “Baller,” up 12% to 89,000 streams over that period) and a 50 Cent soundtrack single (2005’s “I’ll Whip Ya Head,” lifted in “Robbed You,” up 11% to 125,000). – ANDREW UNTERBERGER
Labi Siffre’s Tender 1971 Classic Finds New Life on Streaming After Bumble Ad Sync
A couple months ago (Sept. 8), Bumble launched a new “For the Love of Love” ad campaign, soundtracked by Labi Siffre’s “Bless the Telephone,” a tender 1971 ditty that’s found a new life on streaming in recent weeks.
During the week of Sept. 26-Oct. 2, “Telephone” earned over 216,000 official on-demand U.S. streams. Eight weeks later (Nov. 7-13), the song now boasts over 1.77 million official weekly streams, clocking a 721% increase in activity, according to Luminate.
In addition to the Bumble campaign, Siffre has also become something of a TikTok star. His management-run account frequently shares clips of the now-80-year-old artist reflecting on his life and career, and many users became even more enamored with him after learning about his queerness and anti-apartheid stance — as well as the artist formerly known as Kanye West sampling him for 2007’s “I Wonder.” On TikTok, the official “Telephone” sound plays in over 36,500 posts, while a clip of a young Siffre performing the song earned nearly 15 million views. — K.D.
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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 Nov. 29, as Taylor Swift and KPop Demon Hunters continue to reign on the chart, a flurry of new albums looks to get in just behind them.
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Summer Walker, Finally Over It (LVRN/Interscope): It’s been four years since R&B star Summer Walker’s previous album Still Over It – twice the time it took in between that set and predecessor Over It – so her new album certainly rates as one of 2025’s most-anticipated. Finally Over It finally arrived on Friday (Nov. 12), with an 18-track, two-disc streaming edition that includes big-name features from Chris Brown, 21 Savage, Doja Cat, Teddy Swims and many more.
The set has some big numbers to live up to following Still Over It, which became Walker’s first No. 1 on the Billboard 200 when it debuted atop the chart with a career-best 166,000 first-week units. That set was riding momentum from both the slow-building acclaim for the original Over It and a top 40-charting Hot 100 hit lead single in “Ex for a Reason”; it may be tougher for Finally Over It to match that after four years and without a new single (though “Heart of a Woman” did reach No. 57 on the chart in late 2024).
Tracks from Finally littered the top of the real-time Apple Music chart upon the album’s release, but its presence on the Spotify Daily Top Songs USA listing was more muted — with no songs remaining in the top 200 on the Nov. 18-dated chart — so the album will have to sell in big numbers to threaten the top of the charts. To that end, Walker has released four vinyl editions of the album (with 14 tracks on all physical releases), as well as four CD boxed set editions, each with a branded piece of clothing and a copy of the CD.
In addition, on Tuesday night Walker released the set’s Cocktail Hour deluxe edition as an Apple/iTunes exclusive for streaming and download — with five audio bonus tracks. She also dropped a The Afterparty deluxe edition of the album to DSPs and download services, which adds three different new tracks to the 18-track set, including a solo version of the original’s Anderson .Paak collab “1-800 Heartbreak.” It might be enough to make Taylor Swift sweat at the very top of the chart, but it should elbow Finally Over It into the discussion for the week’s top debut.
NF, Fear (NF/Capitol): Don’t count out NF, who hasn’t had a major crossover hit since 2017’s “Let You Down,” but who maintains a very steady chart presence — with a pair of No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200, and a No. 2 bow most recently with 2023’s Hope. His latest release isn’t a full-length, but a six-track EP; still, all six tracks debuted in the top 60 on Spotify’s Daily Top Songs USA chart (including two in the top 10); all six bowed higher than any track from Still Over It.
The set should also sell well to the rapper’s highly devoted fanbase, with Hope available for purchase in a pair of vinyl variants, a standard CD, and a deluxe CD boxed set (with a T-shirt and CD) — with signed copies of the set previously available on his webstore already sold out. If the set’s streaming performance can remain strong enough to make up for its relatively short track length, it should have a strong chance of a top five debut, and may also contend for the highest-bowing set of next week.
5 Seconds of Summer, Everyone’s a Star! (Republic): Now a full decade past its initial breakthrough, Australian pop-rock group 5 Seconds of Summer has maintained a respectable mainstream standing by evolving and maturing as it’s progressed. Consequently, it’s managed to reach the top two on the Billboard 200 with each of its first five studio albums, most recently reaching No. 2 with 2022’s 5SOS.
The band’s new embrace of self-awareness on Friday’s Everyone’s a Star! can be seen both in advance single “Boyband” and the name of its Cool Dad deluxe edition — a webstore exclusive with five additional tracks (including the title track), to go with a separate Fully Evolved deluxe (four bonus tracks, not with “Cool Dad”) and seven additional variants in both vinyl and CD. The surfeit of deluxe editions should help the album reach the Billboard 200’s top 10, though continuing the group’s streak of top twos might be a bit out of reach.
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Cody Johnson debuts at No. 2 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart (dated Nov. 22) with a take on The Chicks’ “Travelin’ Soldier.” The update starts with 11.9 million official U.S. streams, 1.3 million in radio audience and 5,000 sold Nov. 7-13, according to Luminate.
It’s Johnson’s highest entrance on the survey, where he’s collected four top 10s, with his first, “’Til You Can’t,” having ruled for nine weeks in 2022. The new “Travelin’ Soldier” also launches atop both Country Streaming Songs and Country Digital Song Sales, becoming his second and fourth No. 1, respectively.
Written and first recorded by Bruce Robison, “Travelin’ Soldier” has been a staple in Johnson’s live set in recent years. He previously issued a stripped-down version during a 2020 livestream and continued fan demand led to the new studio recording, released Nov. 7 ahead of Veterans Day on Nov. 11.
The song carries a notable chart legacy. The Chicks’ rendition topped Hot Country Songs for a week in March 2003, marking the group’s sixth and most recent No. 1. It reigned days after the trio drew intense backlash following Natalie Maines’ criticism of then-U.S. president George W. Bush — a flashpoint that reshaped the group’s relationship with country radio and has been widely chronicled in the decades since.
Ballerini Strolls In
Kelsea Ballerini opens at No. 37 on Hot Country Songs with “I Sit in Parks” (2.9 million streams, 1,000 sold). The track appears on her six-song EP, Mt. Pleasant, released Nov. 14. She’ll perform Wednesday (Nov. 19) at the 59th Annual CMA Awards, airing on ABC, and is nominated for female vocalist of the year.
Meanwhile, Johnson, recovering from surgery to repair a ruptured eardrum, will sit out the telecast. Still, he enters the night as one of its leading contenders, earning four nominations, including entertainer and male vocalist of the year.
