five burning questions
As the holiday catalog rush threatens to subsume the entirety of popular music this week, one breakout artist debuts an entirely new LP on the top five of the Billboard 200 albums chart (dated Dec. 21): ROSÉ.
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The BLACKPINK alum bows at No. 3 this week — behind a sales-surging Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department and a still-hot Kendrick Lamar’s GNX — with her debut solo set Rosie, which moves a very strong 102,000 units in its first week. The album, which features a who’s who of notable pop writers and producers in its credits, is also led by a hit collab with global superstar Bruno Mars, “APT.”
Does the set have another likely hit on it? And what should ROSÉ do next to take advantage of her current momentum? Billboard staffers discuss these questions and more below.
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1. ROSÉ debuts at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 this week with Rosie, moving 102,000 equivalent album units. If you’re ROSÉ or one of her team members, how excited are you feeling about that bow, on a scale of 1-10?
Rania Aniftos: I’m thinking 9. Sure, it’s not No. 1, but to rank so highly on the Billboard 200 with your debut album as a solo artist is a major accomplishment. It also must be validating for ROSÉ to know that while she’s a major star in BLACKPINK, she can also hold strong on her own.
Christopher Claxton: On a scale of 1-10, I’d say I’m at a solid 9 — not quite a 10 yet because the ultimate goal is always No. 1. That said, landing a debut album at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 is an incredible achievement, especially considering how competitive the charts are right now. It’s a testament to the hard work of ROSÉ and her team, as well as the unwavering support of her fans. This milestone sets the stage for even bigger moments in the future, and it’s exciting to see what’s next!
Kyle Denis: A strong 8. Obviously, the prestige of hitting No. 1 on the Billboard 200 is something every artist strives for, but +100k units shifted first week and a No. 3 bow aren’t anything to scoff at. Clearly, there’s a sizable audience that has bought into ROSÉ beyond BLACKPINK and arguably beyond “APT.” — the song is still going strong, but Rosie’s opening-week numbers didn’t benefit from that song’s massive first few weeks.
Jason Lipshutz: An 8. Considering that Taylor Swift’s mega-selling (and newly re-stocked) The Tortured Poets Department and Kendrick Lamar’s recent surprise release GNX are still going strong at the top of the Billboard 200, a No. 3 bow for ROSÉ should be treated as a big win. History tells us that solo projects from members of global pop groups are not guaranteed any fraction of commercial success, so ROSÉ kicking off her solo run with a six-figure equivalent album units debut, in addition to a top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100, represents a launch that’s well above average.
Andrew Unterberger: An 8 feels right. A six-digit bow for ROSÉ is a very big deal, and if you’re going to debut at No. 3 in the year 2024, Taylor Swift and Kendrick Lamar are definitely the two artists you are most comfortable with falling behind.
2. Obviously much of the interest around Rosie is centered around “APT.,” the Bruno Mars collab that has topped the Global 200 for the last eight weeks. After debuting at No. 8 on the Hot 100, the song has been buried somewhat in recent weeks by the deluge of holiday songs — but do you think the song still has the legs to keep growing into one of the defining hits of early 2025?
Rania Aniftos: I feel like SZA’s deluxe album will dominate the start of 2025, just like S.O.S did at the beginning of 2023. However, I certainly don’t think we’ve seen the end of “APT.” They’ve only performed it once and, who knows? Maybe they’ll add another star on a remix to amplify it even more.
Christopher Claxton: “APT.” has already proven itself as a global heavyweight, holding the No. 1 spot on the Global 200 for eight weeks —a huge accomplishment. While the track’s Hot 100 placement has dwindled due to the holiday season, its appeal remains the same. Once the sessional surge subsides, I believe this record has a strong chance of making a comeback, especially with its strong fanbase support and Bruno Mars’ signature touch.
Kyle Denis: Absolutely. Once consumers and radio programmers have finished up their holiday break, they’re going to be on the hunt for pop songs that have a bit of familiarity but don’t feel as overplayed as some of 2024 biggest hits. That’s exactly where songs like “APT,” Kendrick’s trio of instant GNX smashes and Gracie Abrams’ “That’s So True” come in. “APT” still hasn’t gotten a remix or a Stateside live performance with both ROSÉ and Bruno present, there’s definitely room to grow.
Jason Lipshutz: We’ll see if “APT.” can surpass its No. 8 peak in January, but I’d suspect that the single will be active in the top 20 of the Hot 100 in early 2025, especially considering how it’s started to make noise on top 40 radio in the U.S. — a platform that’s been notoriously allergic to most K-pop artists. With Mars playing co-pilot, a monster global listenership and now a host album to boost streams, though, “APT.” will likely have legs as we kick off the new year.
Andrew Unterberger: It really feels like we’re just getting started with “APT.” It’s already huge, but not so pervasive that it feels like it’s run its course — there’s still a ton of potential new fans out there that probably haven’t even heard it yet — and radio is only just starting to give it its full support, which should only increase once the holiday rush (and Mars’ other huge late-2024 hit, “Die With a Smile”) starts to die down. I’d be pretty surprised if it didn’t hit a new Hot 100 peak in the first couple months of 2025.
3. Do you think there’s a second hit to be found in the Rosie tracklist? If so, what song or songs do you have your eye on for that?
Rania Aniftos: I’m loving “Toxic Till the End.” It’s such a relatable but fun pop song that, with the proper marketing and maybe some social media virality, could propel ROSÉ to Tate McRae- and Chappell Roan-level pop star ranks as a solo star.
Christopher Claxton: Absolutely! I think the next hit could be “Drinks or Coffee,” which is one of my personal favorites from the project. While it hasn’t cracked the Hot 100 yet, I believe it’s just a matter of time. As listeners spend more time with Rosie, they’ll come to appreciate how special that track is. “Drinks or Coffee” stands out because it captures the complexities of modern-day relationships. ROSÉ and her love interest are at a crossroads of intimacy and hesitation, making it deeply relatable for anyone navigating the push-and-pull of human connection.
Kyle Denis: I have my eye on “Toxic Till the End”; it’s got some cool Eternal Sunshine-esque synths and Guts-nodding guitars that keep it in line with top 40’s general sound while offering a specific combination of elements that feels, at least partially, unique to ROSÉ right now. “Gameboy” could also surprise as the album’s second hit.
Jason Lipshutz: I’m all in on “Toxic Till the End,” which follows up the party-ready chants of “APT.” with relationship angst, mid-tempo frustration and a big, moody chorus. It’s a great showcase for ROSÉ, and the type of confident balladry that could serve as a centerpiece for future live performances. “Toxic” placed high on Spotify’s New Music Friday playlist when Rosie was released, but couldn’t cut through the holiday deluge on the Hot 100; we’ll see if it has a chance to make noise in 2025, but my fingers are crossed.
Andrew Unterberger: “Toxic Till the End” feels like a great lost Avril Lavigne single — which, as any music fan between the ages of 20 and 40 knows, is just about the biggest compliment you can give a pop-rock single. I worry if it will be able to elbow its way onto the Hot 100 as “APT.” continues to grow in the new year, but I hope there’s some late life in it, because this is a song that deserves to become unavoidable.
4. The BLACKPINK ladies have all done fairly well in their solo careers, but do you think with “APT.” and Rosie that ROSÉ is on her way to stardom totally independently of the group’s massive success?
Rania Aniftos: No doubt in my mind. She’s got the full pop star package: the look, the talent, the creativity and the stage presence. If anything, the BLACKPINK girls’ individual successes will boost the group as a whole even more.
Christopher Claxton: Absolutely. If I’m not mistaken, Rosie is now the highest-ranking album on the Billboard 200 by a K-pop female solo artist, which is a huge milestone. Couple that with the global success of “APT.,” and it’s undeniable that ROSÉ is carving out her own space in the music industry. While BLACKPINK’s success has definitely opened the door for her, ROSÉ’s ability to deliver chart-topping hits that not only connect with listeners on a personal level but make their way to additional playlists proves she’s well on her way to becoming a star in her own right.
Kyle Denis: Yes. “APT.” reached the Hot 100’s top 10 in its first week of a release, a region no song from BLACKPINK or her bandmates has ever sniffed. I think Bruno Mars’ co-sign and the shift away from BLACKPINK’s EDM-heavy sound have helped a lot of people tune into ROSÉ. “APT” feels like it’s pierced the top 40 bubble because it’s simply a catchy song, not because of mass fan mobilization or a larger cultural shift. When you hear ROSÉ’s name, “APT” is probably more likely to come to mind than BLACKPINK – and that’s probably the most important step in establishing her as a solo star independent of her group’s success.
Jason Lipshutz: The success of BLACKPINK undoubtedly helped set up ROSÉ’s high-profile bid for solo stardom, but the best thing about Rosie is that it stands on its own: a listener could be a casual fan of the group, or not a fan at all, and still find a lot to love within ROSÉ’s mainstream-friendly yet intimately drawn pop aesthetic. Because of that, I do believe that she’ll be able to balance her work with BLACKPINK with a durable solo career, especially if ROSÉ continues unveiling more of who she is as an artist and person.
Andrew Unterberger: It feels like she’s there. Again, I’d love to see what kind of longevity the album can have into 2025 — and beyond “APT.” — but the rollout so far has been very impressive, and ROSÉ certainly seems to have the talent and the drive to make it stick.
5. If you were working on ROSÉ’s team, what would you be advising her to focus on in the new year to best take advantage of her current pop momentum?
Rania Aniftos: Live shows! She killed it at the MAMA Awards with Bruno, and it would be a great opportunity to bring the songs and her talents face-to-face with fans. With some festival appearances, she can definitely pick up some more fans along the way.
Christopher Claxton: I hate to say it, but a social media trend can truly work wonders for any musician’s career. If I were on ROSÉ’s team, I’d be thinking about what kind of trend we could create for a song from this album or even for her upcoming music in 2025. Whether it’s a dance challenge, a meme, or something entirely unique, a well-executed trend could drastically change the trajectory of a song’s performance. Based on how well her current singles and album are performing, it’s safe to assume her future releases will do great — but imagine how much further her music could go if a trend pushed it beyond her existing fanbase and into entirely new audiences.
Kyle Denis: Stay as visible as possible, just look at Sabrina Carpenter’s 2024.
Jason Lipshutz: I’d advise her to play the Rosie songs live, as often as possible. No clue what she and the rest of the BLACKPINK ladies have cooked up for 2025, but Rosie is strong enough to warrant a proper tour, and ROSÉ is captivating enough to command sizable audiences. Imagine swaying along in a crowd to “Number One Girl” and “Toxic Till the End,” surrounded by cell phone flashlights! Let’s hope it happens next year.
Andrew Unterberger: Yeah, it’s all about the live performances for me. I’m looking forward to seeing ROSÉ lighting up the award show circuit in early 2025, hopefully with a variety of different approaches to different songs that really demonstrates the full extent of what she’s capable of as a pop star and convinces anyone watching that she belongs as a fixture on those stages. I’m optimistic.
It’s officially that time of year again — on the charts, anyway. The proper holidays may still be a couple weeks ago, but the Billboard Hot 100 is in full seasonal swing, with timely perennials absolutely taking over the chart’s top tier.
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As it has at some point in all of the last six years — although it had to split time a bit last year — Mariah Carey‘s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” rules the Hot 100 dated Dec. 14, followed by last year’s three-week champ, Brenda Lee‘s “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” And Wham!’s “Last Christmas,” celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, already hits a new all-time peak this week by jumping to No. 3.
What other seasonal staples might hit new peaks on the Hot 100 this year? And how long until “All I Want” starts to seriously threaten the all-time chart record? Billboard staffers discuss these questions and more below.
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1. Though Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” captured the Hot 100 No. 1 for the first three weeks of the holiday season in 2023, this year Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” is the first seasonal classic to claim the chart’s apex. Are you surprised at the changeover, or did you expect “All I Want” to reclaim its throne on the early side this year?
Katie Atkinson: I had no doubt that Carey would reclaim her Christmas crown; it was just a matter of at what point in the 2024 holiday season. That said, it also feels very likely that Brenda Lee could rock her way back to the top of the Hot 100 Christmas tree this year. What was exciting about “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” hitting No. 1 for the first time last year was the idea that maybe a revolving door of holiday classics (or maybe even new seasonal songs) could jockey for that position each year, keeping the Christmas chart race interesting and festive — just like in Love, Actually (or in the real U.K.).
Kyle Denis: I’m not surprised at all. The Mariah Claus promotional machine has been in full swing since Oct. 2 – the date of her first Christmas-themed Instagram post of the year. Between her ongoing holiday tour and a new 30th-anniversary edition of Merry Christmas, both Carey and “All I Want” have been far more visible than Brenda Lee and “Rockin’” at this point in the season.
Jason Lipshutz: “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” reaching the top of the Hot 100 for the first time last year represented a lovely chart tribute to Brenda Lee, a beloved performer in her late seventies who got to watch her song hit No. 1 decades after its release. That said, “All I Want for Christmas Is You” remains the dominant holiday pop smash of this era, and will exist as the safest bet for the No. 1 slot in December unless there’s a special circumstance (such as Lee releasing a music video for “Christmas Tree” last year). Maybe Lee notches more weeks atop the Hot 100 during this and future holiday seasons, but Carey’s hit will remain bigger for the foreseeable future.
Andrew Unterberger: Yeah, Brenda Lee had a deserved nice moment for the song’s 65th anniversary last year, but Mariah remains the Queen of Christmas — and in the 30th-anniversary year of her Merry Christmas Album and its signature hit, there was never any real chance of anyone besting her.
Christine Werthman: Am I surprised that the queen of Christmas has reclaimed her throne? No, and I suspect that she will sit there all season. I was much more shocked that Brenda Lee topped the chart in 2023 simply because Mariah has been so dominant.
2. Wham!’s “Last Christmas” ranking is perhaps the real headline news of this week’s Hot 100, as the ‘80s holiday staple reaches a brand-new peak of No. 3 this week. Why, after four decades, do you think the song continues to grow on the charts?
Katie Atkinson: It’s just such a perfect pop hit, in addition to being a great Christmas song. And it’s celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, so just like Brenda Lee pulled out all the stops last year for the song’s 65th anniversary – new music video, round-the-clock media appearances, etc. – we’re seeing Wham!’s Andrew Ridgeley hit the interview circuit to hype up the beloved song. It hit No. 1 in the U.K. for the first time in 2021 and has spent a total of seven weeks in the top spot. I would love if this were the year for it to climb to No. 1 in the U.S.
Kyle Denis: Outside of it being a near-perfect pop song that’s gotten tons of new lives over the past few decades thanks to some stunning covers, I think “Last Christmas” is benefitting from a new generation of queer audiences connecting with George Michael’s lyrics. Long considered a queer Christmas classic, these new listeners can hear and see themselves in “Last Christmas” — and it’s likely they were introduced to the song through covers from pop stars like Ariana Grande and Taylor Swift. I definitely expect “Last Christmas” to continue surging in the coming weeks, especially as some of 2024’s biggest stars – like Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan and ROSÉ — deliver their own spins on it this holiday season.
Jason Lipshutz: “Last Christmas” has been a holiday staple for years now — but the top three of the current Hot 100 makes clear that Wham!’s classic is now considered precisely the third-biggest holiday staple, behind “All I Want for Christmas Is You” and “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.” The song has slowly grown in stature over the years, and while reaching a new peak on the Hot 100 is an achievement worth commemorating, I do think that No. 3 high will remain for quite some time, since Lee’s smash still outpaces Wham! in streams and airplay, and Carey’s holiday hit towers above both. Maybe “Last Christmas” eventually climbs to No. 2 this year or in the near future, but it also might have hit its ceiling this week.
Andrew Unterberger: It’s all about anniversary years, isn’t it? “Last Christmas” grows in estimation every year because it’s one of the best holiday-themed songs ever written, but it’s specifically spiking this year likely due in no small part due to sentimentality over the song celebrating its 40th birthday this year — and will do so only more so once the physical single versions of its anniversary reissue ship this Friday.
Christine Werthman: Because…it’s a vibe? In all seriousness, the song is usually a less invasive option than many Christmas songs. While “All I Want for Christmas Is You” is a showstopper and “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” kicks it back to the oldies, “Last Christmas” seamlessly slides into playlists that aren’t even entirely holiday themed. It’s an easy one to play on repeat.
3. Though both are now considered modern classics, neither Ariana Grande’s “Santa Tell Me” (No. 19) or Kelly Clarkson’s “Underneath the Tree” have yet hit the Hot 100’s top 10, both peaking thusfar at No. 11. Do you think this be the lucky year for Ariana, Kelly, both or neither?
Katie Atkinson: I’m going to wager that, on the strength of the good will around her performance in Wicked, this could be Ariana’s year. Anecdotally, it feels like I’ve heard “Santa Tell Me” more than ever this year – especially in Target, for what it’s worth – and this is obviously not scientific, but it just feels like the song has some serious tailwinds at the moment.
Kyle Denis: I’m going to give Ariana the edge; she’ll be incredibly visible this holiday season thanks to Wicked and the awards cycle for both film and music. She also has three physical 10th-anniversary editions of the “Santa Tell Me” single available on her website, and those will ship on Dec. 20.
Jason Lipshutz: I predict “Santa Tell Me” to hit the top 10 for the first time this year, once some long-running non-holiday hits like “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” and “Die With a Smile” (as well as Kendrick Lamar’s GNX material) naturally starts slipping. Along with the holiday season, we are currently in the Autumn of Ariana, thanks to Wicked dominating the box office and earning Grande raves (and a Golden Globe nod as of yesterday), in addition to hosting Saturday Night Live and seeing Eternal Sunshine pop up on year-end lists. “Santa Tell Me” will no doubt reach the top 10 of the Hot 100 someday — why not this season, during Grande’s red-hot streak? Other holiday songs may try to crowd it out and keep it down in the top 20, but I think “Santa Tell Me” will be… wait for it… apologies in advance… defying gravity.
Andrew Unterberger: Why not both? They’re the eighth- and ninth-highest-ranked holiday hits on the Hot 100 currently — so if they stay at their current trajectories, they’ll both have a pretty good shot at making the top 10 when Christmas music becomes all anyone is listening to in the next couple weeks to come. Unless Kendrick Lamar has a second 2024 album in the offing for late December; can’t totally rule out the possibility of course.
Christine Werthman: Unless there’s a cup of cheer and a sweet new sync in their future, neither of these songs are breaking into the top 10 this season. I know there’s a lot of Ari fever because of Wicked, but I don’t think it will drive more people to stream “Santa Tell Me.” Bah humbug!
4. Lower on the ranking, Laufey makes her Hot 100 debut with the new “Christmas Magic” from Red One. Does it feel like a future staple to you, or will most of its impact come this season?
Katie Atkinson: I could see it being a staple. It’s got that timeless, jazzy feel of a lot of holiday music, and Laufey taps into the same vibe that Zooey Deschanel mined with her She & Him Christmas project, which has become a mistletoe mainstay. Laufey and Christmas music go together like candy canes and cocoa.
Kyle Denis: No — then again, I don’t think anything attached to Red One will be a future staple. I also think Laufey can come a bit harder, though “Christmas Magic” is just fine. Regardless, it’s really great to see her on the Hot 100 for the very first time!
Jason Lipshutz: “Christmas Magic” may not sound like a typical holiday hit, but Laufey has a ton of goodwill at the moment, with a passionate fan base and a growing number of casual listeners latching onto her singular style. Seeing her score her first Hot 100 hit with an Amazon Music holiday track was not on my bingo card! But it’s a well-deserved debut, and will lead to bigger things in 2025.
Andrew Unterberger: I don’t think this is necessarily the song that’s gonna do it, but I have every confidence in Laufey eventually finding her way to a holiday perennial — she’s got just the right voice and temperament for it, not to mention the sizeable following. (You can already see her versions of “Winter Wonderland” and “Santa Baby” creeping up the Spotify charts as well.)
Christine Werthman: This is a pleasant, jazzy little bop, but I can’t even listen to the full thing because I don’t have Amazon Music. I would guess there are many others like me out there, so I think this will have a limited impact beyond this year. Also, Red One has a 31 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, and though I have not seen the movie, I am guessing it will not become the type of holiday classic that will help endear certain songs to listeners (like Home Alone for Brenda or Love Actually for Mariah).
5. This marks Mariah Carey’s 15th week atop the Hot 100 with “All I Want,” leaving the song just four weeks shy of tying the all-time record held by Lil Nas X’s Billy Ray Cyrus-featuring “Old Town Road” and recently matched by Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy).” Do you think it’ll claim the record in the next couple years?
Katie Atkinson: Yes. In fact, I feel confident in guessing that it will surpass the record next year. What will be most interesting is how many weeks it can sustain in the years to come after that. This unique way of piecing together weeks at No. 1 could create a truly untouchable all-time Hot 100 record. Long live the Queen of Christmas.
Kyle Denis: Barring any unforeseen rule changes, I think it’s safe to say “All I Want” will claim the title by the end of the 2025 holiday season. At least Lil Nas X can say his 19 weeks at No. 1 were consecutive!
Jason Lipshutz: Definitely. Unless “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” makes a forceful push to become the top holiday hit, or something semi-recent like “Santa Tell Me” or “Underneath the Tree” explodes for some unforeseen reason, “All I Want for Christmas Is You” is going to keep logging weeks at No. 1, year after year, and eventually own the all-time record. My question is, how far can it go once that record is claimed? If Carey keeps spending a month at No. 1 every year for the next half-decade, could we see “All I Want” reach 30 total weeks at No. 1? How about 40? Because of this annual tradition, the sky is the limit for what Carey could achieve as a perennial chart behemoth.
Andrew Unterberger: Yep, hard to see anything short of a holiday-themed “We Are the World”-type gathering of superduperstars getting in its way.
Christine Werthman: Oh yes, she’ll get there. Slow and steady wins the race!
If you thought that we were finished with major releases for the 2024 calendar as we approached Thanksgiving and the beginning of year-end season, Kendrick Lamar let you know real quick that the year ain’t done yet.
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Two Friday afternoons ago (Nov. 22), Lamar snuck up on an unsuspecting public with the sneak-release of his previously announced new album GNX. The 12-track set builds on the momentum he established earlier this year with his Drake feud — which produced a pair of Billboard Hot 100 No. 1s in the Future and Metro Boomin collab “Like That” and his own “Not Like Us” — and produces a third Hot 100 No. 1 with “Squabble Up,” tops among the seven new songs the rapper launches into the top 10 this week, while also topping the Billboard 200 with 319,000 units moved.
Which is the most impressive of his current chart achievements? And how do we rate Kendrick Lamar’s 2024 at this point? Billboard staffers discuss these questions and more below.
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1. Kendrick Lamar’s GNX debuts atop the Billboard 200 with 319,000 first-week units — the biggest debut week for a rap album in 2024, despite no physical release and just 12 tracks’ worth of streaming totals — while also capturing seven of the top 10 spots on the Hot 100, including the entire top five. Which of the two achievements is more impressive to you?
Kyle Denis: I think the Hot 100 feat is a bit more impressive. The first-week units total for GNX is commendable, but the figure is squarely in Kendrick’s usual ballpark. Occupying the Hot 100’s entire top five – in the face of the fast-rising holiday songs and some of the most stable smashes of the year – is the kind of feat that moves Kendrick into a different column. Tons of acts have had albums debut with over 300,000 units, but only three other acts – The Beatles, Taylor Swift and Drake – have simultaneously held the top five spots on the Hot 100. That’s the kind of stat that helps get you to GOAT status.
Angel Diaz: I think both are equally as impressive. Selling that many units off pure streams and debuting No. 1 with no lead up or warning other than the GNX trailer he posted minutes before the album hit, is crazy when you look back on that fateful Friday afternoon here on the East Coast. But it’s also very cool to see “underground” West Coast rappers like Lefty Gunplay and Dody6 getting their first Hot 100 looks thanks to Kendrick. That’s unheard of in today’s landscape.
Jason Lipshutz: The latter, not just because it’s a chart achievement that only Taylor Swift, Drake and The Beatles have done before, but because flooding the top 5 of the Hot 100 demonstrates how much bigger GNX is than Kendrick Lamar’s other recent output. After all, 2022’s Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers debuted with two songs in the top 5 of the Hot 100 and three total in the top 10 — impressive for any artist, but literally half as impressive as what Lamar just accomplished with GNX. A new Kendrick Lamar album was always going to be in contention for the biggest rap debut of the year, but we’ve never this level of consumption of his songs on the Hot 100, and that chart feat showcases the album’s true enormity.
Michael Saponara: MUSTARDDDD. I’d have to go with occupying the entire top five of this week’s Hot 100 as, ironically enough, Drake was the only rapper to ever do that before him. Kendrick’s had a commercial resurgence that just wasn’t as potent earlier in the decade and there’s something to be said that the Compton rapper has notched more No. 1 hits in 2024 than the rest of his decorated career combined. He’s also the first rhymer to have three No. 1 debuts on the Hot 100 in the same calendar year.
Andrew Unterberger: Hot 100 for sure. He’s had Billboard 200-dominating albums before but he’s never blanketed the Hot 100 like this — to the point where he might even end up in the mix to have multiple No. 1s from the album before all is said and done. It’s crazy to see him so central to popular music right now, but obviously well-deserved.
2. GNX fell out of the sky on Friday at noon ET, with no advance warning. Do you think that promotional strategy ultimately helped, hurt or had no major effect on the album’s first-week performance?
Kyle Denis: I honestly think it may have hurt the album’s first-week performance. With his run of diss tracks this spring and summer and a general elevation of his celebrity, Kendrick had millions of consumers ready to eat up whatever project he put out. I think giving people some notice, even if it was just 24 hours, would have resulted in slightly better numbers than a full-on surprise drop. A bit of notice would have allowed fans to mobilize and create their own listening experiences and made for a seamless DSP uploading process — GNX reportedly took over an hour to appear on streaming platforms for some users. These are small things, but they’re the kinds of moves that could have at least helped the album get closer to the 350,000 range. Not to mention, a pre-announced release date would have also given Team Kendrick time to get physical copies of the album available upon release – but that would also depend on when K.Dot finished the album.
Angel Diaz: First of all, I’m sick of these surprise releases, man. I am begging for artists to chill out because they are making us lose our minds on a Friday and into the weekend. With that being said, as a fan, I love it and everyone I knew that’s not in this business were playing that album. You heard it at the barbershop over the weekend and out of car speakers, so yeah I definitely think that strategy had a major effect, especially for the casual fan seeing the chatter on social media and hitting play out of pure curiosity. The album being so good and having so much replay value also helped.
Jason Lipshutz: The surprise release has become a tactic generally reserved for superstars… and since Kendrick Lamar is one of our biggest, the out-of-nowhere drop absolutely helped him here. The shock of GNX — no leaks, no heads-up, just a brand new Kendrick album to stream on your Friday lunch break — defined the pop culture discourse of that day, and immediate reactions began to bubble up on social media to keep streams high through the weekend. Not every A-lister could pull off that type of unveiling, but Lamar did here, and scored one of the biggest debuts of his career in the process.
Michael Saponara: I don’t think there was much of a major impact with the surprise release. To be honest, I kind of expected something along those lines from the elusive K. Dot rather than a traditional rollout. He only lost 12 hours so that resulted in a minimal lagtime in spreading the word that rap’s boogeyman had returned. Between the Drake feud and the anticipation from fans for a new project, there really was no wrong way for Lamar to deliver his next album.
Andrew Unterberger: I don’t think it really matters for its commercial performance — he could have released this album any which way and it still would’ve probably done about this well. But for maintaining the overall excitement level of his 2024, this was probably the best way to go.
3. “Squabble Up” debuts atop the Hot 100 this week as the top-performing song from the new album, but it has already been passed on the daily streaming charts of both iTunes and Spotify by both “TV Off” and “Luther.” Which of the three songs do you think will ultimately be the biggest hit from the set?
Kyle Denis: Of the three songs, I think “TV Off” will have the biggest peak, but I also anticipate “Luther” following a similar trajectory to that of “Love,” Dot’s 2017 duet with Zacari. “Luther” might not ever reach the top of the Hot 100, but I expect it to have impressive longevity and stay on the charts longer than any other GNX track.
Angel Diaz: I love “Luther”, but I really hope the West Coast street anthems like “Squabble Up” and “TV Off” stand the test of time and continue to perform in the future. So, to answer the question, I’ll put money on “Squabble Up.”
Jason Lipshutz: “TV Off” and “Squabble Up” are the album’s two turn-the-volume-way-up anthems, and while “Squabble Up” likely benefited from being placed second on the track list and gaining listeners’ immediate attentions, “TV Off” is the more enduring battle cry, thanks to the stronger K. Dot flow, positively nasty beat switch and the instantly meme-able “MUSTAAAAAAARD” moment. Who knows? Maybe once the holiday music onslaught subsides, Kendrick can kick off 2025 with another Hot 100 chart-topper.
Michael Saponara: I’m gonna go with “TV Off” as the winner here. It’s topped the Apple Music charts and spurred a ton of chatter on social media with endless meme-ability thanks to Kendrick’s pair of “MUSTARDDD” shout-outs to the track’s producer. Lefty Gunplay’s ominous chorus has also been going viral. We’ll see what kind of staying power the trio has at the top of the Hot 100, especially with rumors of a deluxe falling out of the sky from K. Dot.
Andrew Unterberger: Yeah prepare for a lot of out-of-nowhere “MUSTAAAAAAAAARD” howls in casual conversation this holiday season.
4. Between his three No. 1 singles and now a No. 1 album as well, this is undoubtedly Kendrick Lamar’s biggest year on the Billboard charts. Do you think he ever would have had a year like this if not for the Drake feud that initially ignited it, or do you think he was due for such a legacy year at some point in his career regardless?
Kyle Denis: I think he was definitely due for a year like this – and the DAMN./Black Panther period would have sufficed if this year had never happened – but I’m not sure he gets it in 2024 specifically without the Drake feud.
Angel Diaz: I think he was due for a legacy year, but this is the way you do it in rap. This is the same thing Jay-Z did when he dissed Nas on “Takeover” the summer before he released his seminal album The Blueprint in 2001. However, Nas was nowhere near the level Drake was commercially, and Jay dissing him ironically resurrected his career while also placing Jigga on the throne. Rap really hasn’t had a power struggle for the crown since then. Did it benefit him? Sure. But he took the throne fair and square.
Jason Lipshutz: This type of year was always lurking within Kendrick Lamar, a singular superstar with a nearly unanimous approval rating, but 2022’s Mr. Morale suggested that he was turning away from commercial prospects in favor of idiosyncrasies and self-examination. Maybe a course-correction was coming, but the Drake feud — and before that, the talk of a “Big Three,” placing Kendrick on the same field as his peers when he believed he was playing a different sport — helped focus his superpowers, and provoke a year-long assault against his naysayers, October’s Very Own included. GNX is not about Drake, per se, but the album punctuates the assertion that Kendrick has spent 2024 making: there is no competition.
Michael Saponara: To this level, I can’t say I saw that coming. He hasn’t been that same kind of commercial titan since DAMN. and that’s over seven years ago at this point. There’s an argument Lamar was due for a “legacy year,” but I think the Drake feud added kerosene to the fire and gave him the lane to become rap’s undoubted MVP for 2024. It’s the biggest rap battle in decades between two of the greatest to do it, so of course it’s going to have a profound impact on the winner. But again, I’ll say I was wrong in that if there was a hit record to come out of the battle, I thought that was going to be Drake.
Andrew Unterberger: He might’ve been due for more of a commercial on cycle — since Kendrick has long sort of been on a one-for-them, one-for-me career path — but you have to imagine that he needed the Drake thing to take him to this. We’ve just never seen Kendrick Lamar get his blood up like this for an entire year before. It must have been something that was stewing in him for some time.
5. Is this the best year a rapper has had this decade?
Kyle Denis: I’m going to say yes. Shoutout to Megan Thee Stallion’s 2020 and Doja Cat’s 2021, though!
Angel Diaz: I think that’s fair to say, but going back a little further, we must remember Future’s 2015 run when he dropped Beast Mode, 56 Nights, DS2 and What a Time to Be Alive. Big Fewtch also had himself an impressive 2024 — with three Billboard 200 No. 1 albums — that was a bit overshadowed by Drake and Dot’s main event.
Jason Lipshutz: Yes, because Kendrick Lamar’s 2024 combines great music with a great narrative — enormous singles, blockbuster collaborations and a no-skips album coalescing around a battle that’s heated, personal and entertaining as hell. His year has transcended stats and honorifics, and become a cultural phenomenon. It’s one that hip-hop fans are never going to forget.
Michael Saponara: Yeah, I can’t see there being much debate about that. Not only the decade, but let’s open that up to the century. Then you’re talking Drake’s ‘18, Ye’s 2010-11, Wayne’s ‘07-’08 and 50 Cent’s 2003 off the top of my head, and Kendrick belongs in that discussion. Three No. 1 hits, one of which flipped the script against rap’s pop deity to defeat him in battle, and an acclaimed album that popped up as a late contender for album of the year honors. Oh, and it’s possible he’s sweeping at the Grammy Awards a month into 2025 before heading out on a stadium tour. This was one for the history books, Dot.
Andrew Unterberger: Hell yeah.
It’s official: Shaboozey‘s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” spends a 19th week at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 this week, tying the all-time record set by Lil Nas X’s Billy Ray Cyrus-featuring “Old Town Road” in 2019.
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The song holds at No. 1 the week the same week that his new single, “Good News,” debuts on the Hot 100 at No. 71. It also follows an eventful night at the CMA Awards for the singer-songwriter, where he performed and was a multi-time nominee, and made headlines at the awards for being the subject of several on-stage jokes that played off his name in a way that some found distasteful.
Will Shaboozey’s new hit be a success in its own right? And will “A Bar Song” eventually rack up a 20th week at No. 1?
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1. Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song” has tied the 19-week record at No. 1 on the Hot 100. On a scale from 1-10, how momentous an occasion do you think this is in chart and/or popular music history?
Kyle Denis: 10. This is probably the single grandest Billboard chart achievement; it’s an incredibly momentous occasion. Especially considering Shaboozey did it as a new artist with no high-profile remixes. It does feel a bit muted because 2019 was just five years ago, but few things can truly take away from how insane it is that the two longest-running Hot 100 No. 1 songs of all time are hip-hop-infused country songs by Black men.
Jason Lipshutz: A 10. I am on record writing that I didn’t think “A Bar Song” would get to 19 weeks, because 19 weeks at No. 1 is literally historic, and only one other song and soared that high in the generations-spanning history of the Hot 100. Now that it’s here, “A Bar Song” deserves its flowers, and to sit alongside “Old Town Road” in the pantheon of new-school mega-hits, the type of months-long smashes that we’ll be happily humming many years from now. Shaboozey should savor this moment, but so should all pop-watchers.
Melinda Newman: I’d give it a 9. Shaboozey had put out two albums prior to the album with “A Bar Song,” and several non-charting singles and now he’s verging on becoming a household name. He already has the record for most weeks at No. 1 for a non-collaboration in the 66-year history of the Hot 100. From here on out, every artist will be chasing his (co-) record.
Jessica Nicholson: 7. Like “Old Town Road” before it, Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song” was an inescapable hit this year, and both were led by Black artists, each crafting their own blend of elements of country, pop and rap into massive hits that resonated with nearly everyone, proving that the amalgam of those genres is a winning formula.
Andrew Unterberger: I’d say an 9. It doesn’t feel quite as momentous as when “Old Town Road” set the record five years ago — mostly because that was only five years ago, and because in the last decade the Hot 100 has clearly started to tilt towards longer-running No. 1s than in prior decades. But a 19-week No. 1 is a 19-week No. 1, and “A Bar Song” was one of the year’s most fascinating singles even before it began its incredible chart run, so it’s definitely still a very, very big deal.
2. Let’s say at Thanksgiving this week, a friend or relative of yours without much frame of reference for pop or country music asks what the deal with this song is. In one sentence, how would you explain this song’s popularity to them?
Kyle Denis: Country and western sounds and aesthetics have been defining aspects of pop culture this year, and “A Bar Song” captured all that energy into a literal, ridiculously catchy, bar song.
Jason Lipshutz: “It’s an anthemic, undeniable sing-along that became historically gigantic by appealing to all sorts of fans — country fans, pop fans, hip-hop fans, fans of J-Kwon’s impeccable 2004 jam ‘Tipsy’ — and clicking at every consumption platform that exists, from top 40 radio to TikTok.” That’s a long sentence, but still one sentence.
Melinda Newman: Even though the song is ostensibly about drinking away your troubles, it’s so insanely catchy, that you can’t help but tap your toes and sing along even if you’re nowhere near a bar or have no history with Jack Daniel’s.
Jessica Nicholson: This song blends a weekend barroom party groove, with lyrics steeped in laidback, workweek escapism, all rolled into one.
Andrew Unterberger: Whether you’re a pop fan, a rock fan, a country fan or a hip-hop fan — or best of all, if you’re all four — everyone loves a good barroom singalong.
3. Shaboozey’s “Good News” also debuts on the Hot 100 this week. We won’t ask if it’ll match the very-close-to-unprecedented success of its predecessor, but what kind of chances would you give it of quickly disqualifying Shaboozey from any one-hit wonder considerations?
Kyle Denis: I’d say it’s still early. It honestly feels unfair to even begin speculating about how a new Shaboozey single will perform as long as it must exist in the domineering shadow of “A Bar Song.” “Good News” doubles-down on Shaboozey’s country framework and shifts away from the uptempo hip-hop nods of “Tipsy,” which might limit just how far it can crossover. Prior to “A Bar Song,” Shaboozey tracks weren’t debuting on the Hot 100 after the first week, so the performance of “Good News” is already promising. And even if this particular song isn’t his second hit, that doesn’t mean he won’t snag one with a different tune.
Jason Lipshutz: I like “Good News” — it’s essentially “A Bar Song (Mournful),” with an impressive vocal take from Shaboozey and some nifty violin work snaking throughout the production — but I’m not sure it will replicate even a tenth of its predecessor’s success. “Good News” is arriving at a crowded moment at the top of the charts, with enduring hits, a new Kendrick Lamar album and the holiday music onslaught about to start. While I’m not sure Shaboozey’s latest will be able to hold on through January and make a chart push, I feel pretty confident that he’ll have something else in 2025 that can follow up “A Bar Song” and silence the one-hit-wonder chatter.
Melinda Newman: Here’s the “good news”: With “A Bar Song,” Shaboozey has already established himself with an instantly recognizable voice. I heard “Good News” and knew it was him without waiting for the song to be ID’d. Having said that, it’s going to take more than one hit and several years for Shaboozey to escape one-hit wonder status. And no matter how many hits he gets, this will be his signature song, but that’s not such a bad thing. I doubt Garth Brooks complains that fans wait all show to hear “Friends in Low Places.”
Jessica Nicholson: The song is already making strong inroads on the Hot Country Songs chart with a top 20 debut, so it seems very likely that this track will void any potential “one-hit wonder” notions. Like “A Bar Song,” “Good News” incorporates a singalong chorus and rustic-leaning acoustic guitar rhythms, which also lends a bit of familiarity for fans of “A Bar Song.”
Andrew Unterberger: Between its rousing chorus and capo’d acoustic guitar melody — and more than a hint of Zach Bryan on the verses — it certainly feels like it could (and should) find a big fanbase on streaming, radio or both. That doesn’t mean it necessarily will — plenty of prior non-“A Bar Song” Shaboozey songs were worthy singles that ended up not really catching fire — but I like its chances.
4. While this is a triumphant, headline-grabbing moment for Shaboozey, he has also been in the news the past week for last week’s CMA Awards, where he went home empty-handed and had his name used as a punchline in a variety of on-stage jokes. Do you think the CMA stuff taints the moment for Shaboozey, or will it soon become a footnote to his and his song’s historic accomplishments?
Kyle Denis: It’s a footnote that only reflects poorly on the CMAs. Hopefully, this moment can help crystallize Beyoncé’s true aim of Cowboy Carter – or at least what I think she was trying to get at. Through its expansive envisioning of Western and Americana aesthetics and collaborations with genre-bending artists like Shaboozey, Cowboy Carter found Beyoncé trying to remind us that being “country” and country music are far bigger than the CMAs or Nashville or any other institution. Shaboozey played the game and earned one of the two biggest songs in Billboard history — that still wasn’t enough to receive basic respect at his genre’s biggest awards show. Why continue to grovel for a seat at their table when you could build several dining halls elsewhere in the vast expanse that is country music?
Jason Lipshutz: Definitely a bizarre moment that possibly left a poor taste in Shaboozey’s mouth, but I’d bet every other artist at the CMA Awards would have wanted a 19-week No. 1 smash instead of a trophy that evening. I’d guess that Shaboozey has a good shot at the best new artist Grammy, and “A Bar Song” is one of the favorites for song of the year — possible redemption, although even being blanked at the Grammys won’t diminish the song’s achievement.
Melinda Newman: Definitely a footnote. He’s already been very classy about the jokes on social media and the simple fact is 80% of the nominees lose, so there’s no shame in going home empty-handed. He gave a fine performance of “Highway/A Bar Song,” and performances are, by and large, what move the sales/streaming needle post-awards show, not whose name is called when the envelope is opened.
Jessica Nicholson: In the short-term, it does feel like it temporarily taints the moment a bit, given all of the big milestones he’s had this year, from being featured on Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter album, his huge CMA Fest performance that shut down Nashville’s Lower Broadway this summer, his Billboard cover, sold-out shows and his Grammy Awards nominations. But in the long run, it will likely be a footnote, given the historic chart run of “A Bar Song,” and Shaboozey’s musical talent, which will likely be giving us more hits in years to come.
Andrew Unterberger: It’s part of his story now, but obviously not as big a part as having one of the two longest-running No. 1 hits in Hot 100 history. You just hope that everyone learns from this moment and Shaboozey is treated more like an insider than an outsider at the next such awards show.
5. The Hot 100 was already about to get crowded with the Christmas rush, and now Shaboozey has a new Kendrick Lamar album to deal with as well. Do you think “A Bar Song” manages to score a record-breaking 20th week at No. 1?
Kyle Denis It’s possible! Kendrick will probably snag a week or two on top before the holiday songs begin to dominate, so if I were on Team Boozey, I’d keep an eye on January. Release a remix – Maybe J-Kwon gets a call? Tease a Beyoncé version at either of their respective NFL halftime sets? — as the holiday songs begin to fade, but before Kendrick gets a double-whammy of a boost come February with the Grammys (Feb. 2) and the Super Bowl (Feb. 9) in back-to-back weeks.
Jason Lipshutz: Look, I have been the one saying “No way it gets to 10 weeks,” “No way it gets to 15 weeks,” “No way it gets to 19 weeks.” You know what? I’m calling it: “A Bar Song” gets to 20 weeks, somehow, some way! I am now drinking the whiskey, going to the party downtown near 5th street.
Melinda Newman: Sadly, no. Even though “A Bar Song’s” sales are going up, its streams are slowing, and it seems unlikely to hold off the juggernaut that is Kendrick Lamar, and, most notable, “Squabble Up” from Lamar’s new album. Plus, Christmas songs will start re-entering and soaring back up the chart. But that doesn’t take away from his remarkable accomplishment.
Jessica Nicholson: Even though “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” has had a stellar run, between the chart surge of holiday songs and the buzz around this new Kendrick Lamar album, it seems likely that “A Bar Song” will get overshadowed on the Hot 100.
Andrew Unterberger: Not in 2024, I don’t think. But we’ve likely got a sleepy January ahead, and I bet it can get at least one more week at that point.
It’s been a hell of a year for singer-songwriter Gracie Abrams, who’s made the jump from acclaimed cult favorite to pop hitmaker — and perhaps just straight-up pop star.
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Abrams, who undoubtedly received a boast from her opening slot on the biggest tour in modern pop history, scored a career-best ranking on the Billboard 200 this summer when her The Secret of Us debuted at No. 2, with tracks “Close to You,” “Risk” and the Taylor Swift-assisted “Us” all hitting the Billboard Hot 100. A few months after, the album’s “I Love You, I’m Sorry” went viral on TikTok, ultimately reaching the Hot 100’s top 20. And now “That’s So True,” a bonus track from the Secret deluxe edition, has bested them all, jumping from No. 13-6 this week to become Abrams’ first-ever Hot 100 top 10 hit.
What’s been responsible for Abrams’ recent surge of momentum? And what kind of chances does the song have of heading off Shaboozey’s historic “A Bar Song” run at No. 1?
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1. A few weeks after being released as a bonus track on the deluxe The Secret of Us “That’s So True” rides serious streaming momentum this week to become Gracie Abrams’ first top 10 hit. What do you think it is about this song that’s helped her reach new chart heights that not even the singles off Secret could reach?
Katie Atkinson: There are so many reasons I personally love this song. There’s the ’90s vibes (this could have had such a huge Pacey/Joey moment on a Dawson’s Creek mid-season finale). There’s the lyrics that are somehow both uber confident and self-conscious. There’s the under-three-minute runtime that never ceases to convince me to immediately run the song back as soon as it’s finished. There’s that great songwriter trick of writing about something so specific that it somehow ends up feeling universal. And there’s that epic bridge that must make Gracie’s Eras Tour-mate feel like a proud parent. Mostly, it’s just a great song that begs for repeat listens, and streaming is there to make that easier than ever.
Kyle Denis: In addition to being a song filled with accessible, relatable lyrics and a vocal affect that recalls the best of Taylor Swift and Lorde’s conversational approach to pop singing, “That’s So True” is a prime case study in momentum. Arriving as the fourth overall single from The Secret of Us, “That’s So True” automatically has the biggest potential audience out of all the album’s singles because it can build on their success. Each Secret of Us single has reached a higher Hot 100 peak than the last. When you couple that with the incomparable platform that is being an opener for the final leg of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, all the pieces were perfectly placed for “That’s So True” to become Abrams’ biggest chart hit yet.
Rylee Johnston: What really helped with the momentum of the song is the way she teased her fans with the song during live performances before it was ever released. She was able to drum up excitement and build an anticipation of “when is she going to drop the song?” Once she released the deluxe version of her album, it made sense that her fans would be eager to stream and listen to it repeatedly.
Jason Lipshutz: “That’s So True” crystallizes Gracie Abrams’ songwriting appeal, and arrived at a time when her momentum allowed for a fast-moving top 10 hit. Abrams’ aesthetic took a massive leap between last year’s Good Riddance and this year’s The Secret of Us, and “That’s So True” features both her most immediate hooks and a more defined point of view than past singles — you get the sense that no one else could deliver it quite like Abrams. Combined with the upward trajectory of her live audiences and streaming numbers, “That’s So True” was primed to be a breakthrough hit.
Andrew Unterberger: It just feels like her strongest song yet. It helps that audiences are more familiar with Abrams now and the hallmarks of her singing and songwriting, so a new song feels like a natural fit in our lives, but there’s a reason this song took off more than any of the other newly released tracks off the deluxe Secret of Us — it’s classic enough to feel recognizable right away, regardless of our Abrams familiarity level.
2. Though this is her first top 10 hit, obviously Abrams has been rising for some time now, with “I Love You, I’m Sorry” even reaching the top 20 recently. What is the biggest reason for her surge in 2024 momentum, do you think?
Katie Atkinson: Of course her placement on Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour was incredibly impactful for building a fanbase, but then Abrams put out her best work yet with The Secret of Us and was able to immediately capitalize on all that newfound interest. Just like Sabrina Carpenter before her, the Eras Tour opening slot puts you in front of more eyeballs then ever before, but you have to have the excellent music to back it up
Kyle Denis: Most of Abrams’ 2024 momentum can be credited to moves she made the year prior. She spent most of 2023 playing stadiums on the Eras Tour, which granted her the chance to win over the tens of thousands of fans that packed out those venues each night. Given the similarity of her music to Swift’s, that wasn’t too difficult of a feat for her to pull off. The tail-end of 2023 also found Abrams linking with Noah Kahan – one of that year’s biggest breakout stars – for “Everywhere, Everything,” which helped her snag her very first Hot 100 entry, building off the early momentum she earned with her debut LP at the start of the year. All she needed was one undeniable single to reach the next level of pop stardom.
Rylee Johnston: The Eras tour has definitely helped Abrams in gathering a larger audience and I’m sure her time as an opener has come with some advice from Taylor Swift. At the scale that the Eras tour is at, she’s able to test things out and play her music to thousands of people across the globe, while picking up new fans along the way who may not have heard of her beforehand.
Jason Lipshutz: Earning a best new artist Grammy nod, opening for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour and headlining her own shows obviously helped increase Abrams’ profile — but simply put, these songs are stronger, more distinct and revealing of Abrams’ perspective than those on her debut. While “I Love You, I’m Sorry” became a viral hit and “That’s So True” a deluxe-edition smash, The Secret of Us tracks like “Risk,” “Close to You” and the Swift collaboration “Us” boast top-notch pop craft, and have each earned hundreds of millions of streams. After a promising debut that yielded a bigger platform, Abrams delivered a great sophomore LP, and is reaping the benefits now.
Andrew Unterberger: This is sorta facile to say, but I think artists like Abrams — who have a strong writing voice and an already devoted fanbase — reach a tipping point of mainstream popularity where the world just kinda opens to them. Maybe Eras got her through the door, maybe she woulda gotten there anyway, but she’s in the building now, and she’s just gonna keep elevating to higher floors from here.
3. Most of the talk about the breakout pop stars of 2024 has centered around Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan — is it time to start including Abrams in that conversation, do you think, or is she still to early in her development for that?
Katie Atkinson: It’s definitely time. Abrams has had a different trajectory than those two examples – most notably, she was nominated for best new artist at the Grammys earlier this year, whereas Roan and Carpenter are facing off in that category at the 2025 ceremony. She might be one hit away from truly reaching the spot Sabrina and Chappell now occupy, so maybe 2025 will be even bigger for Gracie.
Kyle Denis: I think it’s too early. I’m happy to have that conversation next year, but until Abrams is pulling festival crowds the size of the one Chappell pulled at Lollapalooza – or simultaneously three solo songs from the same album in the Hot 100’s top ten for multiple weeks à la Sabrina, for that matter – we can pump the brakes.
Rylee Johnston: I don’t think she’s far off, but she’s still new to this level of the industry and I think she’s still taking time to hone and perfect her craft. That’s not to say it isn’t coming anytime soon though: Give it a year or two and I bet we will see Abrams at their level.
Jason Lipshutz: It’s absolutely time to include Abrams, because, like Carpenter and Roan, her rise has been defined by more than one song. If Abrams had simply scored a single modest hit from The Secret of Us, then I’d be a little more dubious about the reach of her stardom — but “That’s So True” is a top 10 hit, “I Love You, I’m Sorry” is a fan favorite turned viral smash, and her Taylor Swift team-up is nominated for a Grammy. Maybe Carpenter or Roan could command bigger audiences at this moment, but this isn’t a competition; all three artists deserve to be recognized for a breakout 2024 that has set up years-long runs for each of them.
Andrew Unterberger: If it’s not time yet, it will be by the end of the year, or next January / February at the latest. She’s done it a little slower and more quietly than Roan and Carpenter, but what she’s building is just as real and sustainable — and we’ll see the fruits of it on her next album, if not earlier.
4. How much bigger do you think “That’s So True” can still get from here? Will we see it unseat Shaboozey from No. 1 before the Christmas rush takes over?
Katie Atkinson: Between Shaboozey and Christmas, I don’t know if “That’s So True” will have the juice to get all the way to No. 1. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it climbs higher in the top five over the next few weeks, as curiosity (and airplay) grow. This is the kind of song that could kick around the top 10 for a very long time.
Kyle Denis: “That’s So True” is in a tough spot because while I believe it has a lot of room to grow, the song will almost certainly be kneecapped by the incoming surge of holiday songs and year-end hoopla. If it doesn’t unseat “A Bar Song” next week, I fear Mariah will enter the ring as her second major opponent the following week.
Rylee Johnston: It’s tough, “A Bar Song” has lasted a historic run and has held strong even against major contenders like Beyoncé, Billie Eilish, Swift and Carpenter. I’d personally love to see it happen, but I think Shaboozey may continue his reign on top until the holidays. I don’t think she’s stopped climbing though, I just don’t think it has enough power with this much time left of the year to reach No. 1.
Jason Lipshutz: If we had another month before the holiday onslaught, then I’d say probably — but really, we’ve got a week or so before Mariah, Brenda and Burl come for us all. Unless “That’s So True” can blast to the top of the Hot 100 before the calendar flips to December, I’d say that its best chance at hitting No. 1 will be in mid-January, if its momentum can keep up for a few months.
Andrew Unterberger: I think if it gets to No. 1 it won’t be until comfortably into next year. It’s gonna need some major radio help, and radio is still too busy testing the waters with the couple Abrams singles before this (“Close” and “Sorry”) to give this song the attention it probably deserves. It’s just a question of if the song’s streaming and cultural power remains potent enough to force radio to shift attention to it — and if it can maintain that streaming hold for long enough to take advantage of it finally spreading across the airwaves.
5. Abrams has a major platform still at her disposal for another few weeks in her opening role on the Eras Tour. If you were on her team, what (if anything) would you advise Abrams to do in her final concerts to potentially drive additional interest in the song?
Katie Atkinson: She still has the music video in her back pocket, and even if she doesn’t unveil the video during her Eras Tour set (it doesn’t seem likely she would do that on Taylor’s stage), the mere mention that a video exists onstage could go a very long way.
Kyle Denis: Right now, I encourage her to keep doing what she’s doing. Continue using different versions of the song’s sound on TikTok and letting it reach people organically. It’s still early in the song’s run, so pulling out the big guns is probably unwise. But once January rolls around, start fielding possible remix options. I’d love to hear Clairo or Maggie Rogers on this, but maybe we should go with a more unexpected pick like Rachel Chinouriri or Faye Webster? Something tells me that this isn’t the kind of song that needs an A-lister remix to reach its full potential.
Rylee Johnston: The ultimate tactic would be another duet with Swift, but if that’s not as easy to execute, then coming up with another viral moment is key to keeping her song relevant. Whether she takes a page from the “Fortnight” singer and changes a lyric in the song or mashes it up with another song, those are just a few things that can drum up further excitement.
Jason Lipshutz: Maybe the official music video premieres live during Abrams’ final opening set of the Eras tour? Yet if the goal is a shot at No. 1, I’d drop the visual on Jan. 1, 2025 — start off the new year but making an end-of-2024 smash even bigger, at a moment when the holiday music is being stored away for another year.
Andrew Unterberger: With the song’s “Smiling through it all, yeah, that’s my life” lyrics referencing one of LeBron James’ most iconic social media moments, how about getting the King to show up to one of the remaining Toronto dates to provide a guest verse or some backing harmonies on it or something? Are the Lakers playing the Raptors any time in the next week?
The benchmarks just keep falling: A week after tying Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night” for the longest-running Billboard Hot 100 of the 2020s, Shaboozey‘s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” moves into sole possession of the mark this frame with its 17th week atop the chart.
What’s more, the song now stands along as the second-longest-running No. 1 in Hot 100 history — just two weeks behind the all-time mark set in 2019 by Lil Nas X’s Billy Ray Cyrus-featuring “Old Town Road.” And Shaboozey may have gotten another boost in momentum with Friday’s (Nov. 8) announcement of the 2025 Grammy nominations, with the country hybrid artist picking up four nods, including best new artist and song of the year for “Bar.”
How surprised are we that “A Bar Song” has gotten this far? And do we see it going all the way at this point? Billboard staffers discuss these questions and more below.
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1. “A Bar Song” spends its 17th week atop the Hot 100 this week, moving it into sole possession of the second-longest run atop the chart in its history. On a scale from 1-10, how surprised are you that it’s lasted on top now for this long?
Rania Aniftos: 4, maybe? There haven’t been many chart-dominating releases that would dethrone “A Bar Song” since the summer. In quieter eras of music releases, it makes sense for the track to make its way back to the summit. It also plays at every bar, restaurant and on every radio station, so its popularity is clear.
Kyle Denis: 10, for sure. I was always extremely confident in this song’s ability to stay at No. 1, but I anticipated that it would begin to fall around the eight-week mark. I did not expect such a historic run at No. 1.
Jason Lipshutz: An 8. Sure, “A Bar Song” is a wildly catchy anthem from a charismatic new artist, with a sound that can cross over to different streaming playlists and radio formats… but chart circumstances are rarely conducive to a 17-week No. 1, and especially during a year that’s featured big hits from proven superstars (Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Billie Eilish, Morgan Wallen) and new A-listers (Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan). “A Bar Song” could have been a huge, multi-platform hit but been knocked off by one of those big names after a month or two on top; instead, Shaboozey can fending off all challengers, and stunningly, now owns the longest-leading solo hit in Hot 100 history.
Andrew Unterberger: It’s a 10. I remember being thrilled that the song grabbed a single week at No. 1, because even that didn’t seem like a sure thing until well into its chart run. The fact that it’s held on for over four months in total since then would’ve been totally unforeseeable — even when we started having the “could it…?” conversations at around the 12-week mark, I thought it was absurd. Not anymore though!
Christine Werthman: 10, although I probably shouldn’t be that surprised. Country is the genre of 2024, with everyone and their mother (aka Beyoncé, our matriarch) getting in touch with their twangier roots. And as someone who remembers quite well the power of J-Kwon’s “Tipsy,” which Shaboozey interpolates, at parties in 2004, it’s no wonder that “A Bar Song” has appealed to the masses and held onto that top spot.
2. Both of the songs to spend 16 weeks atop the Hot 100 this week have been country songs — why do you think a genre that rarely spun off Hot 100 No. 1s this century until a few years ago is now regularly spinning off such long-lasting chart-toppers?
Rania Aniftos: I think it’s a mix of things. For the first time in what feels like a while, there are exciting young stars in the genre like Morgan Wallen and Kelsea Ballerini, plus some long overdue diversity with people like Shaboozey and Beyoncé. On top of that, you have established pop stars like Bey and Post Malone dipping their toes into country, introducing the genre to an audience who might not have given it a shot previously. It’s a recipe for success.
Kyle Denis: With “A Bar Song,” Shaboozey was able to supplement his (and the song’s) crossover appeal with legitimate support on country radio, breaking Carrie Underwood’s record for longest-running No. 1 debut single on Country Airplay (seven weeks). Of course, it also helps that 1) country music is the sound of one of the year’s most dominant cultural aesthetics, and 2) the song mines early ‘00s nostalgia with its interpolation of J-Kwon’s “Tipsy.”
Wallen’s “Last Night” also draws on contemporary hip-hop motifs with its use of 808s, smartly positioning it for crossover appeal (it reached the top five on both Pop and Adult Pop Airplay) and placing it conversation with where hip-hop’s mid-to-late ‘10s dominance pushed the mainstream’s overall sound.
While these are certainly country records, both songs make a concerted effort to bridge the gaps between country’s sound and hip-hop’s influence on top 40 in a way that the genre’s previous Hot 100 chart-toppers didn’t necessarily do.
Jason Lipshutz: The shift we’ve seen in popular music over the past 10 years is the mega-hit that is able to combine country listeners and pop listeners, in order to form like Voltron and plop itself atop the Hot 100 for months on end. It’s happened with non-country artists making songs that appeal to Nashville listeners (like Lil Was X with “Old Town Road”) and country artists crossing over to pop fans (like Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night”). Both audiences have been sizable for decades on end, and while they’ve overlapped before to produce huge artists and albums, until recently, they did not combine at the top of the Hot 100. It’s a type of alchemy that has helped “A Bar Song” turn into a juggernaut, and one that we’ll surely be seeing more of in the near future.
Andrew Unterberger: Radio, radio, radio. Country has now fully made the crossover leap to pop radio — at least at the highest level of hits — and once you get both of those formats working for you, you can stay in the mix for the Hot 100’s top spot practically indefinitely. Consistent streaming and sales also have been part of the Shaboozey formula, of course, but without that continued radio support it would’ve been lucky to crack double-digit weeks on top, rather than pushing for the all-time Hot 100 record.
Christine Werthman: If I had a dollar for every time someone told me, “I love all kinds of music but not country,” or, “I like old-school country, like Johnny Cash, but not any of the new stuff,” I would be able to retire. But those responses have changed a lot over the past few years, and I think a lot of credit is due to Taylor Swift being a gateway to country (although she walked away from the genre), as well as Lil Nas X and “Old Town Road.” That song pushed country to a new audience and showed that “the new stuff” didn’t have to mean corny pop-country smashes. Other artists took note and are now reaping the benefits.
3. There was such turnover on the Hot 100’s top spot this spring — why do you think “A Bar Song” has seen such a lower level of competition in its late-year run?
Rania Aniftos: As I mentioned before, there weren’t really any summer releases that really dominated the charts the way we’ve seen in other years, besides Sabrina Carpenter’s new songs. I feel like the past few months on the Hot 100 have been a revolving door of the same few songs, because there haven’t been many album drops from big, established stars. So, unless a big release comes through this fall and shakes things up, the chart’s going to look the same for a while.
Kyle Denis: Few songs can compete with the crossover appeal of “A Bar Song.” The song has hit seven different Billboard radio charts and it’s still in the top five of several of those rankings. “A Bar Song” even reached a new peak on Adult Contemporary Airplay this week (No. 12, chart dated Nov. 16). While other songs have been juggernauts within their home genres, “A Bar Song” was able to outlast them by having a wider audience to pull support from.
There’s also something to be said about some of the year’s biggest pop songs facing competition from other songs on the same album. Sabrina Carpenter is juggling four different hits, “Good Luck, Babe!” is fighting for attention against Chappell Roan’s entire debut LP, and Billie Eilish’s “Birds of A Feather” is soaring alongside the steady growth of “Wildflower.” Though he’s pushed other songs post-”A Bar Song” — namely “Highway” and his BigXThaPlug-assisted “Drink Don’t Need No Mix” — none of them have emerged as a viable follow-up smash.
Jason Lipshutz: Coincidental timing, more than anything. In my opinion, a lot of the No. 1 singles from the first half of the year — “Like That,” “Fortnight,” “Lose Control,” “I Had Some Help,” “Not Like Us” — would have also hit No. 1 in the second half of the year, and cut into “A Bar Song’s” monster run, had their release dates and/or commercial rises been slightly shifted by a few months. The first six months of 2024 were stuffed with blockbuster singles, and a lot of them nestled in for extended runs in the top 10 of the Hot 100 throughout the summer and early fall, while “A Bar Song” kept outpacing them thanks to its own growth across formats.
Andrew Unterberger: I had hoped that the massive activity of this spring would be the new rule rather than just an exception to the overall early-year chart stasis we’ve seen in prior years this decade — but we just might not have enough songs and artists offering the excitement level to really shake up the top of the Hot 100 to spread out over a full year at this point, sadly. So we traded a boring spring for a boring autumn this year, and it’ll ultimately balance out for the full calendar. So it is.
Christine Werthman: The average time spent on the Hot 100 for songs currently in the top 10 is 25 weeks. Morgan Wallen and Tyler the Creator have newer songs at Nos. 9 and 10, respectively, but the top five average is even older at 32 weeks. Things are just moving slowly, and listeners like what they like and keep coming back to what they know. Play the hits, as they say!
4. Shaboozey was nominated for best new artist, and “A Bar Song” song of the year, at this year’s upcoming Grammys. Which Big Four category do you think he has the better chance of winning?
Rania Aniftos: The competition is tight in both categories, but I’m going to say best new artist. He’s up against some longtime Recording Academy favorites in the SOTY category, like Billie Eilish, Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, so he might get luckier in the BNA category, highlighting his breakout year. Who knows though? The Grammys are always surprising.
Kyle Denis: A country song hasn’t won song of the year since Lady A’s “Need You Now” (2011), and that’s one of two nominations for country songs in this category in the past 10 years. Conversely, eight country artists have earned best new artist nods in the past decade, with Zac Brown Band being the most recent winner (2010).
Even though “A Bar Song” is easily the biggest chart hit nominated for song of the year, it’ll likely split votes with Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold ‘Em” (the other country song in this category) and lose some pop voters to Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan, Lady Gaga & Bruno Mars, and Billie Eilish. What could work in Shaboozey’s favor, however, is his lack of a nomination in record of the year. Song of the year is the only place in the general field where the Academy can specifically honor the longest-running solo Hot 100 No. 1 single of all time.
On the other hand, as the sole country nominee in a best new artist field brimming with straightforward pop stars, Shaboozey could end up taking home that trophy. It’s still early in the race, but I think he’s got a better shot at winning best new artist.
Jason Lipshutz: Song of the year. While there are some huge names in both categories, my early guess is that best new artist will go to either Chappell Roan or Sabrina Carpenter, considering that both artists have rattled off multiple major hits instead of one enormous smash. Because “A Bar Song” has become so year-defining, though, I think Shaboozey has a great shot in the song of the year race.
Andrew Unterberger: He’s not necessarily the favorite in either category, but I think best new artist is at least a possibility if the poppier nominees cancel each other out a little. That’s where I’d be exercising the most campaigning muscle if I was on his team, anyway.
Christine Werthman: I never guess these correctly, so let’s say, song of the year, knowing that it’ll probably be best new artist. Grammys: so mysterious!
5. Will “A Bar Song” beat the “Old Town Road” all-time record of 19 weeks atop the Hot 100?
Rania Aniftos: Very likely, especially as the Grammys approach and, if the song gets some wins, it might get yet another boost on the charts.
Kyle Denis: Barring any surprise drops or an earlier-than-expected surge in holiday tunes, yes.
Jason Lipshutz: I’ve been saying no for a while, and I will still say no. We’re two weeks away from a tie and three weeks from a new record, and with holiday music about to take over, it will be a photo finish either way. But 20 weeks (or more!) at No. 1 still boggles my mind to such a degree that I can’t count on multiple more weeks atop the chart. I’m rooting for Shaboozey at this point, but I were a betting man, I’d wager that “Old Town Road” remains on top.
Andrew Unterberger: I think it will? I never like betting against the unknown — which is why I’ve been betting on Shaboozey continuing on at No. 1 to this point — but we’re running out of time for surprises, and Christmas season probably isn’t going to get here quite quickly enough to block him. I can’t maintain my skepticism at this point; I think “A Bar Song” is gonna get to 20.
Christine Werthman: Holiday parties are coming up, and those playlists need to pop. I think “A Bar Song” will be a fixture and end up breaking that record. Everybody in the club gettin’ Shaboozey! [Whispers: Everybody in the club gettin’ Shaboozey].
Tyler, the Creator has been one of the biggest names in hip-hop for nearly a decade and a half now, but his commercial performance and general stardom is still on the ascent. He topped the Billboard 200 albums chart with both of his last two LPs (2019’s IGOR and 2021’s Call Me If You Get Lost), and now he makes it three in a row with this year’s Chromakopia — even with just over half a week of availability.
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Tyler dropped Chromakopia at 6:00 a.m. ET on Oct. 28 — a Monday morning, three-and-a-quarter days already into the tracking week ending Oct. 31. Losing those days of potential sales and streams seemingly should have hamstrung the album’s debut performance, but Chromakopia still bows with 299,500 equivalent album units, beating not just his own previous career-best (Lost‘s 169,000 in its debut week) but the prior best mark for any hip-hop album this year (Eminem’s 281,000 bow for The Death of Slim Shady: Coup de Grâce).
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How was Tyler able to rally such an eye-popping performance in under four full days of release? And what does this entrance mean for his current star status? Billboard staffers debate these questions and more.
1. Tyler, the Creator’s Chromakopia debuts at No. 1 with 296,000 equivalent album units in about 3 ¾ days — barely half of a whole first week, and still not only the best number of his career but the best of any hip-hop album this year. On a scale from 1-10, how stunned are you by that number?
Eric Renner Brown: 3. I’m not stunned that Chromakopia had such a big debut, or that it posted those numbers even with only a partial week. He’s a superstar. If anything, I’m surprised that Tyler’s two previous efforts, Igor and Call Me If You Get Lost, both had first-week tallies (165,000 and 169,000 respectively) that lagged far behind Chromakopia‘s (despite being full weeks). Tyler’s been headlining arenas and festivals for years – his recorded success might be a lagging indicator of his popularity.
Kyle Denis: About a 7.5. I was very confident in Tyler’s ability to shift units, but I thought he’d top out at around 250,000 units. Nearly 300,000 units shifted is a massive achievement, but I’m most impressed at the ratio of streaming units to pure sales. He moved 142,000 in pure album sales (his best sales week ever) and 157,000 in streaming equivalent units (about 213 million official on-demand streams, his biggest streaming week ever for an album)… that means he would’ve been No. 1 even if based solely on streams or solely on sales!
Jason Lipshutz: A 4. While scoring a career-best equivalent album units total in half a week is a stunning achievement in a vacuum, Tyler, the Creator’s popularity has recently exploded to such a degree that I am not remotely surprised to see him earn the year’s biggest hip-hop debut or approach the 300,000 mark. After notching his first No. 1 album with 2019’s Igor, Tyler’s profile has expanded over the past half-decade, thanks to critically acclaimed albums, dynamic guest spots, arena shows and awards performances. He is one of the biggest stars in modern music, so while the details of this debut are a little surprising, the personality behind them is not.
Michael Saponara: 9.5. To do just under 300,000 in about a half week of tracking is incredible and proves Tyler is a commercial titan and forced to be reckoned with as a leader of his generation. It was only further crystallized after hearing he would have gone No. 1 on the Billboard 200 taking either sum of pure physical sales or streaming alone.
Andrew Unterberger: Gotta be at least an 8. I mean, we all knew that Tyler was big — and always getting bigger — but was he “year’s best rap first week with only half a week” big? Even if you suspected it was possible, there’s no way you could be confident in something like that before seeing it, especially because these numbers blow so far past any of the (already-quite-impressive) numbers he put up with his last few acclaimed sets.
2. Obviously a lot has gone in to lead up to that huge opening number for Chromakopia, but what would you say is the biggest reason it’s zoomed past Tyler’s previous releases in its first quasi-frame?
Eric Renner Brown: Tyler’s profile has risen significantly since 2021. Just look at this year’s Coachella, where he wasn’t only a headliner, but performed what many considered the festival’s highest-concept and best set. For a long time, Tyler was a popular cult favorite (his lack of a major Hot 100 hit until now, as lead or featured artist, has played a big part in this). Now he’s finally crossing over in a way that more general music fans are being exposed and taking notice. The Odd Future of it all is also important: With every passing year, Tyler gets further from his controversial Odd Future days, and they constitute a decreasing portion of his overall career. It’s easy to imagine adolescents and young adults who love Tyler’s generally approachable modern era and haven’t heard Bastard, Radical or Goblin. And that might be for the best (they should check out “Oldie,” though).
Kyle Denis: More than its rollout or the quality of the music – both undoubtedly remarkable – Chromakopia benefited from the steady world-building of all things Tyler. From 2017’s Flower Boy, Tyler has used each new studio album to level up the narrative and conceptual worlds of his LPs, his stage show, his overall aesthetic, and most importantly, his fans’ trust in his ability to consistently put out quality work and products that are worth buying with their hard-earned money.
With that leveling up comes pre-album hype, and Chromakopia certainly had that thanks to the success of Flower Boy, Igor and Call Me If You Get Lost. That three-album run solidified Tyler as one of hip-hop’s best mainstream album-makers and world-builders, and fans were willing to show up for him – even if that meant waking up early on a Monday morning. Of course, pre-album hype isn’t a complete explanation; Chromakopia ultimately lived up to the hype, ensuring that its consumption numbers didn’t dramatically taper off as the tracking week continued.
Jason Lipshutz: Simply put, Tyler, the Creator is the coolest artist in hip-hop right now — able to speak to young listeners and bring in veteran rappers as guest artists, having spent a decade in the spotlight but still moving with the dynamism and unpredictability of a fresh new star. The evidence may be anecdotal, but if you’ve been paying attention to Tyler’s streaming numbers, ticket sales, Golf Wang merchandising efforts or Camp Flog Gnaw festival bookings, you’d see empirical evidence that his cultural cache has steadily risen in recent years, to a fever pitch by the time Chromakopia was released. It helps that his latest full-length contains some of his strongest songs and most interesting musings on fame, aging and potential fatherhood — but regardless of the content, Tyler is currently in too-big-to-fail territory.
Michael Saponara: Tyler typically released projects every other year and he skipped over the odd year trend when 2023 came and went so I think there was even more of an appetite for Tyler music. He’s been able to play the long game and make it work beautifully as he continues to build on his success commercially with every album it seems.
Andrew Unterberger: It’s been a snowball effect for his last three albums, each of which have arguably been more acclaimed and more accomplished than the one before. He’s built up that consistent standard of full-album excellence more than anyone in contemporary hip-hop (with the lone exception of fellow West Coaster Kendrick Lamar), so it makes sense that folks would show out like this for a new set of his in 2024.
3. No doubt that number would have been even bigger — perhaps even borderline-historic — had Tyler gone the traditional route with a Friday release, but it’s hard to deny that doing the Monday-morning drop seems to have been beneficial for the album’s overall reception. If you were in charge of the album rollout, would you have recommended Tyler go for the full first week for the really eye-popping number it might’ve produced, or do you think he was better off doing the midweek release he did?
Eric Renner Brown: By dropping midweek, Tyler got the discourse to himself – which I’m guessing helped juice his numbers and interest in the album, even during that truncated period. I wouldn’t have changed a thing. Tyler has built his career on intensely passionate fans and zigging where others zag. This release strategy is in keeping with his M.O. as an artist, and I expect many more divergences from industry norms in the future.
Kyle Denis: I think this number is eye-popping enough; it’s a triumph in every way. I’d probably tell him to keep the midweek release. The attention was solely on Tyler, and the Monday release allowed him to sidestep the deluge of music that floods DSPs on Fridays. I also think people got to engage the album with fresh start-of-the-week ears instead of having to work their way through a relatively dense new project after a long week of pre-election mania.
Jason Lipshutz: There are pluses and minuses to both strategies: with a Monday release, Tyler’s new album dominated the focus of music fans for four solid days before any new album was released on Friday, but its first-week numbers were always going to be deflated by arriving in the middle of the chart week. Obviously Tyler prioritized cultural conversation over commercial returns when it came to Chromakopia, but I’d be hard-pressed to find too many artists who would want to jeopardize a chart placement by cutting their first-week numbers in half. So to answer the question: Tyler has reached the level of fame where he can forego the traditional route, and I’d encourage him, and other superstars, to mix things up as much as they wanted.
Michael Saponara: I actually liked Tyler breaking the status quo and going with the Monday morning release. Especially after hearing Chromakopia, it’s better suited as a companion on that work/school commute than the party pre-game playlist on a Friday night. An interview with Nardwuar resurfaced where Tyler articulated the active versus passive listening that fans endure with that routine weekday commute rather than laid-back weekend activities. It’s not like he sacrificed doing a big first week of sales – think about years ago saying Tyler would outsell Eminem while having about half the tracking time.
Andrew Unterberger: The purist in me would love to know what kind of number Tyler could have amassed with a full week’s consumption on this album — obviously he would’ve blown clear past 300k, but would 400k have been in range? Maybe with a little extra button-pushing, perhaps even 500k? I love to see our best artists going for history, but I also love to see our best artists doing what feels right to them artistically and getting maximum attention that way. Ultimately he’s probably better off going the route he did, though for my own curiosity’s sake, I wish we could at least simulate the other reality.
4. “St. Chroma” leads the way on the Hot 100 this week from the album, with all 14 songs making an appearance (and “Noid” also appearing at No. 10). Does “Chroma” seem like the obvious Hit on the album? Does Chrompakopia have (or need) an obvious Hit?
Eric Renner Brown: I’ve been following Tyler since the early Odd Future days, and think he has gems throughout his catalog, from his adolescent horrorcore right up through his modern soul-and-funk-infused hip-hop fantasias. “St. Chroma” is one of the best and most beautiful things he’s ever put to tape. It’s also a strangely structured, knotty song that doesn’t feel like a hit, and that’s how I feel about most of the album. “Darling, I,” another Chromakopia standout, comes close: Like much of Tyler’s work, it’s off-kilter in a tough to articulate way, but it’s a traditionally structured song with a total earworm of a hit and an exciting guest turn, from Teezo Touchdown. All that said, given Tyler’s quiet but deep influence on contemporary hip-hop and R&B, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of these hits pull the Hot 100 to them despite their nonconformity.
Kyle Denis: Forget “St. Chroma,” “Sticky” is the obvious hit on Chromakopia. From the lunchroom-evoking beat to the bombastic marching band horns to fiery verses from Tyler, GloRilla, Sexyy Red and Lil Wayne, “Sticky” will probably be Tyler’s biggest hit yet, if handled correctly. Interestingly, I don’t think Chromakopia needs a traditional hit, but it’s cool that it has one waiting in the wings. Tyler never saw the top 10 of the Hot 100 before this week, but that didn’t stop him from scoring four consecutive six-figure opening week totals and winning Grammys for his last two albums.
Jason Lipshutz: Tyler fans checked out the entire album upon its release, and “St. Chroma” benefitted from being the opening track on Chromakopia… but “Sticky,” the outrageous fight-night anthem featuring GloRilla, Sexyy Red and Lil Wayne, is the obvious hit to me. Not only do all three guests make a lasting impression with four-bar pop-ins, but Tyler’s charisma runs rampant on the track, the schoolyard-chant chorus will make you ready to throw down at any moment, and those horns in the back half deliver the single best adrenaline rush on the album. I can’t wait to see thousands of people lose their minds when Tyler drops that one in concert.
Michael Saponara: I’ve been leaning on “Sticky” as my go-to this past week. Shout-out to Sexyy, Weezy and Big Glo. I don’t think there’s an “obvious hit” on the project that will dominate the charts and that’s okay. The album doesn’t need the single anthems to accomplish his goal and make noise commercially as Tyler will be riding Chromakopia into another set of Grammy nominations in ‘26.
Andrew Unterberger: It seems like “Sticky” is on its way to hit status, though that feels just the tiniest weird to me as the album’s breakout single because I’m sure the parts that are really taking off on TikTok and that are gonna be dropped at every festival DJ set for the rest of the year are the parts that don’t really even involve Tyler. Personally I would love it if “Darling, I” could end up being this album’s “Birds of a Feather.” But honestly “Sticky” still knocks so I wouldn’t be mad at that becoming a major radio, club and chart fixture either.
5. Tyler has been operating on the fringes of superstardom for most of the past half-decade or so — does this Chromakopia half-debut confirm to you that he has officially arrived as one? (If not, what does he still need to do to get there?)
Eric Renner Brown: I would argue that Tyler has been a superstar for a while, albeit not quite on the level of your Billies and Harrys and so forth. But he’s been a bankable festival headliner for years and has been rubbing shoulders with the top-tier of artists for even longer. But what’s standing between him and that A+-tier is a major crossover hit. I don’t think Chromakopia will yield that for him – and I’m not sure that’s what he’s chasing, anyway.
Kyle Denis: I’m probably a bit biased because my circles run younger and have followed Tyler for years, but I personally began to recognize him as a superstar with Call Me If You Get Lost. We’re talking about an album that returned to No. 1 nearly a year after its initial release thanks to the 49,000 vinyl copies it sold, which was then the largest vinyl sales week for a hip-hop album – and he blew past that number with Chromakopia’s first-week vinyl sale total. I vividly remembered how that album took over conversations for months, backed an arena tour and anchored his 2024 Coachella headlining performance. Even the way people lost their minds at the “St. Chroma” teaser signaled to me that Tyler had reached another level of stardom.
Nonetheless, if I’m being a bit more pragmatic, Tyler needs at least one bonafide across-the-board smash before we can truly call him a superstar. I think “Sticky” can be that song for him.
Jason Lipshutz: Yep, this is it, the train has left the station. And kudos to Tyler for never forsaking his outsider status for the sake of mainstream exposure, or capitulating to any hip-hop trends over the past decade. He is a proudly weird superstar — we need more of those.
Michael Saponara: Oh yeah, he’s a bona fide superstar with a massive arena tour in tow. I think where it gets tricky, for me, is he considered a pop star with that kind of crossover commercial appeal? “NOID” and “St. Chroma” were the first pair of Hot 100 top 10 entries in his career and I think he needs that single anthem everyone in middle America is singing along to and it’s all over radio if he wants to elevate to that Super Bowl Halftime Show level of stardom eventually.
Andrew Unterberger: Can you be a superstar without a massive crossover hit? In 2024, the answer is probably “yes” — and also, maybe Tyler sorta stealthily had that hit already with “Earfquake” five years ago anyway. At the very least, Tyler is now unquestionably one of the most impactful artists of this pop and hip-hop generation, in ways we will probably continue to see blossom throughout this decade and likely beyond.
Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” was on the verge of scoring a landmark 16th week at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, tying the longest run atop the chart this decade. But for this week (on the chart dated Nov. 2), he’s kept at bay by the fellow country artist whose mark he would’ve been tying: Morgan Wallen.
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Wallen, whose “Last Night” reigned for 16 weeks over the course of 2023, enters the Hot 100 at its apex this week with his new song “Love Someone.” The heavily TikTok-teased and live-promoted new single becomes the country superstar’s first song as a lead artist to debut atop the listing, and his second overall — following his featured turn on Post Malone’s “I Had Some Help” earlier this year, ultimately a six week No. 1.
Why did this song turn out to be an instantaneous chart-topper? And does it set the stage for Morgan Wallen to get even bigger on his fourth album? Billboard staffers discuss these questions and more below.
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1. Though Morgan Wallen has been knocking off chart accomplishments left and right for most of the decade now, “Love Somebody” is his first single as a lead artist to debut at No. 1. What do you think the biggest reason is for the song’s massive debut?
Katie Atkinson: I would credit Morgan’s epic summer, which, yes, included his Hot 100 No. 1 duet with Post Malone, but also his One Night at a Time stadium-tour victory lap, where he played 10 60,000-capacity venues from April to August and kept his music top of mind all season. Now he’s playing across Europe, where he premiered “Love Somebody” onstage, and collecting an even wider audience. The release of this crowd-pleaser of a song is a cherry on top of a huge few years for him.
Kyle Denis: I think it’s probably a combination of things. Wallen perfected the art of the tease with “7 Summers” a few years bag, and he’s only tightened up his game since. He first teased “Love Somebody” on May 16 via TikTok, and he’s been performing the song in full as early as August 29. People have already decided that they enjoy and want to support the song – they just needed an official release. Of course, it also helps that Wallen’s hype train hasn’t lost any steam; he’s been parked in the upper reaches of the Hot 100 for most of the year thanks to his appearance on Post Malone’s “I Had Some Help” and he’s been packing stadiums with the last few shows of his One Night at a Time tour.
Elias Leight: Wallen had the wind in his sails coming into this week: His single “Last Night” spent roughly a third of 2023 at No. 1, and “I Had Some Help,” his collaboration with Post Malone, topped the chart in the early summer this year. “Love Somebody” outperformed Wallen’s previous solo single, “Lies Lies Lies,” across the board, pulling in 4.1 million more streams (31.1 million, compared to 27 million for “Lies Lies Lies”) and 3,000 more sales (17,000 for “Love Somebody” vs. 14,000 for “Lies Lies Lies.”). That all helped, but the biggest difference in support came from radio: While “Lies Lies Lies” earned 4.5 million in airplay audience opening week, “Love Somebody” more than tripled that total, reaching 15.2 million.
Jason Lipshutz: “Love Somebody” may be Wallen’s first solo single to debut at No. 1, but “Last Night” spent a whopping 16 weeks there last year, and “I Had Some Help” with Post Malone started in the top spot earlier this year. Plus, Wallen has had six top 20 hits on the Hot 100 as a lead artist in the roughly year-and-a-half since “Last Night” became his first chart-topper. He’s been a superstar for multiple years at this point, and while I expect “Love Somebody” to become one of his bigger hits, its No. 1 debut isn’t shocking considering Wallen’s stature upon its release.
Andrew Unterberger: Morgan Wallen hardly needs some help these days when it comes to launching a hit lead single, but it probably shows how much belief he has in “Love Somebody” to be a huge, maybe even defining hit that he hedged his bets by teasing it so extensively ahead of time, both on TikTok and at live shows, and by apparently going hard with the radio promotion, as evidenced by the song’s first-week numbers there. It’s the most concentrated push I can remember a Wallen single getting, and it’s not surprising it’s resulted in a No. 1 debut.
2. “Love Somebody” isn’t Wallen’s first No. 1 this year, as he was already featured on Post Malone’s “I Had Some Help,” a six-week No. 1 in its own right — and it’s not his first top 10 hit on his own, as his “Lies Lies Lies” debuted at No. 7 in July. Which of the two songs do you think “Love Somebody” more builds upon musically or thematically, if either?
Katie Atkinson: Definitely “Lies Lies Lies.” We often only get one side of the country-star life in song, whether the subject matter is the beer-soaked tailgate parties or the girls in impossibly tight jeans. But “Lies Lies Lies” and “Love Somebody” are both about the other side of that coin: namely, being surrounded by countless friends and lovers but feeling more alone than ever.
Kyle Denis: Of the two, “Love Somebody” feels more in line with “Lies Lies Lies” with its focus on the push-and-pull of love and heartbreak and its soft rock-inflected country sound. While it’s still a banger, “I Had Some Help” really leans into country-pop and feels more like a break-up party track than a moment of serious introspection. It also feels much more like a Post Malone song than both “Lies” and “Love.”
Elias Leight: “Lies Lies Lies” is bleary-eyed and desperate, overwhelmingly distraught in the manner of older Wallen ballads like “Your Bartender.” The lyrical motif also evokes Zach Top’s “I Never Lie,” another strong country record from earlier this year; both songs paint cheerful pictures of a put-together post-breakup life, only to reveal it’s all made up. “No thoughts of your body runnin’ through my head,” Wallen sings. “No bottle of bourbon beside the bed.” A few short lines later, the truth comes out: “I’m still a fool for you/Nothin’ I wouldn’t do for you.”
While both “I Had Some Help” and “Love Somebody” also live in the shadow of romantic wreckage, they are breezy and up-tempo, the type of thing that goes down smooth on pop radio. (“Love Somebody” was co-written by Jacob Kasher Hindlin, who also has credits on Maroon 5’s “Sugar” and Charlie Puth’s “Attention.”) Wallen said “Love Somebody” was “inspired by Latin-leaning influences,” but the result sounds more like vintage yacht rock, complete with a flashy needlepoint guitar solo.
Jason Lipshutz: “Love Somebody” doesn’t utilize the same sonic palette as “I Had Some Help,” but both singles represent oversized, mainstream-aimed smashes, with undeniable refrains and an understanding of Wallen’s strengths as a vocalist. “Lies Lies Lies” showcases his charm with a mournful tone and has hung around the top 20 of the Hot 100 for months, but isn’t as ready-made as a ubiquitous crossover hit; there’s a reason why it started at No. 7 on the Hot 100, at “Love Somebody” launched in the top spot.
Andrew Unterberger: Increasingly, I view Morgan Wallen songs as falling into one of two buckets: Those with a little tempo and those without. As a decided “with,” I feel “Love Somebody” is far more in league with “I Had Some Help” — and most of my other Wallen songs of choice.
3. Hard not to notice that “Love Somebody” interrupts the reign of Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” one week before the latter was set to tie Wallen’s “Last Night” mark of 16 weeks atop the chart for the longest reign of the decade. Do you think the reign will be an extended one, or do you see “A Bar Song” threatening to take back over the top spot for its 16th frame as soon as next week?
Katie Atkinson: I have a feeling Morgan is going to hang on awhile with this one. The poppy production and lyrical cadence make this one ripe for a beyond-country crossover moment, and it hasn’t left my head all week. Also, its melodic similarities to Dua Lipa’s “Training Season” (the songs share a handful of songwriters) means it already feels familiar just a week in.
Kyle Denis: Yes. Given Shaboozey’s massive cross-genre support on radio and the steady streaming success of “A Bar Song,” I expect the VA cowboy to return to the top spot sooner rather than later.
Elias Leight: Since Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” has been at the top of the chart for so long, it’s starting to lose altitude at streaming — an inevitable result after flying so high for so long. And although the single is still moving up at Hot AC radio, it’s declining at Pop, and he is now promoting a different track to country radio stations. Since Wallen’s song is new, he can move quickly to consolidate support at the Pop and Hot AC radio formats, expanding his reach, while climbing further in his core format of country. That said, Shaboozey and his label have had a long time to prepare defensive maneuvers to stave off a potential challenger.
Jason Lipshutz: While I would never want to count out the enormity of “A Bar Song” after the last few months we’ve experienced, it does feel like the time has come for the top of the Hot 100 to turn over to some degree, with “Love Somebody” leading the charge as an autumn-released smash. I’m not sure how long “Love Somebody” spends in the top spot since it’s still early days and it’s a slightly different, Latin-influenced sound for Wallen, but the timing of its No. 1 debut suggests that Shaboozey’s huge hit may finally be sliding a bit, and I’d bet against it logging more than maybe one more week at the top of the Hot 100.
Andrew Unterberger: I think “Love Somebody” might need a couple weeks to amass the total radio support he needs to hold on to a No. 1 spot once his first-week sales and streams recede — but in the meantime, looks like Shaboozey has extra competition for No. 1 from a newly motivated Lady Gaga & Bruno Mars and a blockbusting Tyler, the Creator. (He’s particularly lucky that the latter kneecapped the first-week numbers for his Chromakopia album by releasing it on a mid-tracking-week Monday, otherwise — given the first-day numbers that set is putting up — he might have had to fend off multiple tracks from that thing next week.) So we’ll see if Shaboozey gets to Week 16 next week or one of the few after, but I doubt Morgan Wallen will be his biggest obstacle regardless.
4. Despite some serious controversies and major backlash, Wallen has seemingly only gotten bigger in his career over his three albums to date. Based on his 2024 output, do you see him getting even bigger with album No. 4 when that comes, or is he bound to plateau by then?
Katie Atkinson: I think we’re still rising and that plateau is nowhere in sight. A lot of people credited Morgan with boosting Post Malone’s bona fides for his debut country single, but I think that mutually beneficial relationship will work in the other direction too. Anyone who doesn’t follow country music and maybe only knew Morgan’s name from when he said the N-word on camera likely at least gave “I Had Some Help” a spin over the summer. There’s room for Morgan to grow and it looks like he’s still growing.
Kyle Denis: I think he probably has one more monster album in him on the level of Dangerous or One Thing at a Time before he starts to plateau. He can ride the mainstream country boom a little while longer and take advantage of the genre being at the center of the zeitgeist right now. I think his real challenge is album No. 5, will a gargantuan 20+ track album work the same magic a fourth time in a row? I’m not sure I’d put my money on it just yet.
Elias Leight: He will continue to get bigger. There are still more listeners for him to reach outside of the country genre, both with pop-leaning records like “Love Somebody” and through his hip-hop collaborations — his song with Moneybagg Yo is being played at my gym, which otherwise ignores country music completely. There’s also more room for Wallen to grow outside of the U.S. as country’s global footprint continues to expand. According to his label Big Loud, Wallen just earned the first ever No. 1 debut on the U.K. Country Airplay Chart.
Jason Lipshutz: He’s going to get bigger — potentially a lot bigger. One Thing at a Time was Wallen’s first album since the controversy, and while it was a juggernaut, there’s no doubt that some number of listeners dismissed the project due to his negative actions. Now, with multiple years between him and those actions, Wallen is ready to pull in new listeners who were part of that outcry against him, while also super-serving the fan base that helped him join country music’s elite. We have a situation in which a superstar has been set up to become a decade-defining artist — as long as he sticks the landing with the music, and avoids anything untoward outside of it.
Andrew Unterberger: Crazy to think of what Morgan Wallen getting even bigger could look like at this point — ’90s Garth Brooks mixed with late-’00s Taylor Swift? — but it does seem like we’ll find out soon; his 2024 has only kept his arrow trending farther and farther upwards. Stadiums, seven-figure first-weeks, Grammys: Who knows for sure, but it all seems in play at this point.
5. Let’s say Wallen was properly motivated to maintain his 2020s mark and continue to keep “A Bar Song” out of No. 1. What new remix or video or other promotional tactic would you recommend him trying out to ensure “Love Somebody” was virtually unmoveable from the top spot?
Katie Atkinson: A remix of “Love Somebody” with a female artist that adds a second verse from a woman’s perspective — give it to me right now. Maybe to keep it personal (since they were once “not just friends”), we can enlist Megan Moroney for the new duet.
Kyle Denis: Drop the official music video with Brianna ‘Chickenfry’ LaPaglia as your leading lady.
Elias Leight: There haven’t been a lot of star-studded remixes helping artists win close chart races this year, though a well-timed music video release from Kendrick Lamar did help “Not Like Us” rebound to No. 1 on the Hot 100 in July. The key to a long run at the top of the chart these days seems to be maintaining interest from a streaming audience while also cultivating support from at least three radio formats.
Jason Lipshutz: Simple enough: perform on The Voice, with surprise guest Adam Levine in his triumphant return to the show, and create a mash-up with Maroon 5’s “Love Somebody” and his own. Will that sound good? Probably not. Will viewers love the synergy? You bet.
Andrew Unterberger: Post Malone returning the “Help” favor by adding some aid of his own here seems like a no-brainer.
The rise of Jelly Roll hits an important new peak this week, as the country singer-songwriter scores his first No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart (dated Oct. 26) with his new album Beautifully Broken.
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After a year of steady new music releases and countless public appearances, Jelly Roll has leveled up to the tune of 161,000 equivalent album units for its first week of his new set’s release. The 22-track version of the album on streaming services includes the singles “Liar” and “I Am Not Okay,” the latter of which currently sits at a new high of No. 14 on the Billboard Hot 100.
How was the album able to have such a big first week? And which country artist might be next to score their first Billboard 200 No. 1 album? Billboard staffers discuss these questions and more below.
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1. Jelly Roll scores his first No. 1 on the Billboard 200 this week, debuting with 161,000 equivalent album units and 114,000 in straight sales. What do you think is the biggest reason behind the career-best numbers for Jelly Roll’s latest?
Kyle Denis: Jelly has been inescapable this year. He sang for the In Memoriam segment at the Emmys, kicked off SNL’s landmark 50th season, appeared on Eminem’s own Billboard 200-topping album, made his television debut on the Sylvester Stallone-starring Tulsa King and even testified before Congress! Of course, it also helps that he’s been incredibly musically active this year. From his collaborations with MGK (“Lonely Road”) and Post Malone (“Losers”) to his Twisters: The Album contribution (“Dead End Road”) and the handful of Beautifully Broken pre-release singles he dropped throughout the year, it felt like Jelly Roll launched a new song (or three) every week. He’s never been more visible, and these career-best sales numbers prove that.
Jason Lipshutz: His cultural ubiquity. Even if you aren’t a country music fan, you are aware of Jelly Roll — through his A-list guest features, TV appearances, awards-show speeches that tend to go viral, or all of the above — and might want to check out a full project by the man who you heard on a Post Malone song or watched on Saturday Night Live. Obviously Jelly Roll has accrued a dedicated fan base, but the casual listeners that have jumped aboard to check out Beautifully Broken undoubtedly helped the singer-songwriter top the Billboard 200 chart.
Melinda Newman: Beyond the music? Good old fashioned hard work. In between his now famous cold plunges, he has shown up for everything and appeared everywhere so that people knew the album was coming. He then priced the album very aggressively to bump sales and, as is the way now, came up with multiple variations, including seven vinyl variants alone, to encourage mega-fans to collect the full set. That’s one reason he saw such high sales figures, compared to downloads.
Jessica Nicholson: Beautifully Broken ultimately contained over two dozen songs, giving fans plenty of new material to dig into, stream and dissect. A large portion of these career-best numbers are due to pure album sales, and his plethora of vinyl and physical album offerings play a role in that. However, the biggest reason for these career-best numbers is Jelly Roll himself. His story, his songs and the message they embody are speaking to audiences and giving a voice to audiences that haven’t been spoken to in some time. Everyone can relate to struggle, vices, self-doubt and heartbreak on some level and his music aims at the heart of that. Also, Jelly Roll comes across as open-hearted, joyous, and unflinchingly honest in a time when so many “personalities” are curated.
Andrew Unterberger: People do love Jelly Roll! The reason he hasn’t worn out his welcome over his past year-plus of massive public exposure is that he seems like a guy you wanna spend time with, wanna root for. He’s got big songs and a big voice, but it seems like it’s the big personality that folks are really connecting with first and foremost.
2. Jelly Roll has taken a fairly strict more-is-more approach since his 2023 crossover breakthrough, being extremely prolific in both his new releases and his public appearances. Does the Beautifully Broken debut seem to validate this strategy to you — or is there still potential long-term downside in it?
Kyle Denis: I think the Beautifully Broken debut does indeed validate his more-is-more strategy – it’s the biggest sales week for a 2024 country album not by Beyoncé or Post Malone. The long-term downside still lingers for sure, but he can ride this strategy until Jelly Roll fatigue truly starts to rear its head.
Jason Lipshutz: Jelly Roll has clearly been striking while the iron is hot, flooding streaming services with solo tunes and collaborations as his profile expands; over-saturation might come into play for some, but the strategy has clearly been working, considering how successful a handful of those tracks, and now his latest album, have become. Now that Beautifully Broken and its deluxe edition have been released, I’d expect Jelly Roll to slow down on the release rate a bit — but who knows? Nashville’s elite will likely be calling him up for guest spots, so maybe he just keeps releasing tracks and gathering momentum.
Melinda Newman: There seems to be no burnout factor on Jelly yet, perhaps because he is still so enthusiastic about every appearance he’s making, each new adventure he undertakes and each new person he is duetting with. It’s infectious and seems genuine. This is someone who so many people had counted out from the time he first went to juvenile detention when he was 14, it’s clear he’s reveling in his near-daily pinch me moments and feels like he’s not just making music, but is on a mission.
Jessica Nicholson: Social media and streaming have made it expected for an artist always have something new to give their fans, whether that is music or content, lessening the danger of overexposure. The more songs you release, the more new music fans have a chance to stream. We’ve seen the release of sprawling albums become one factor (among many) contributing to the success for artists such as Morgan Wallen, with his three-dozen song album One Thing at a Time and Post Malone’s 28-song F-1 Trillion (Long Bed) project, with seemingly no downside to releasing that much material.
Andrew Unterberger: I do wonder if he’ll eventually hit a tipping point with this strategy, because no one can be this omnipresent forever without starting to exhaust people at least a little bit. But evidence suggests that he’s not there yet, certainly. Assuming he continues at this level of productivity, it’ll be interesting to see on the next album if that growth remains consistent.
3. “I Am Not Okay” has been the most high-profile of Jelly Roll’s hits this year, making the Hot 100’s top 20 and getting performed during the In Memoriam montage at this year’s Emmys. Does it feel like a potential signature hit to you, or is it mostly benefitting from the singer-songwriter’s positive career momentum?
Kyle Denis: To me, it feels more like a potential signature hit than anything else on Beautifully Broken. It’s one of the stronger songs on the record, and I think people are responding to the emotional punch that it packs. Yes, his positive career momentum is helping the song, but I’d imagine at least one of the album’s 27 other tracks would be pulling off a similar performance if positive momentum was all it took.
Jason Lipshutz: Last week, I spent an entire day with “I Am Not Okay” stuck in my head — I caught myself singing it in line at Dunkin, warbling “I Am Not Okay” while waiting to order an iced coffee (so I was, in fact, very okay). Jelly Roll has more accomplished songs than his latest hit, including Whitsitt Chapel hits like “Need a Favor” and “Save Me,” but “I Am Not Okay” is the catchiest song he’s ever released, with a melody that simply won’t dislodge from your memory. I think it’s going to keep growing and become a smash.
Melinda Newman: It feels like it could become a signature hit, but he’s already had 4 No. 1 on Country Airplay, so it’s competing with now Jelly standards, like “Need a Favor, “Son of a Sinner” and “Save Me.” But “I Am Not Okay,” with its mental health message, has reached a new audience for Jelly Roll that knows no boundaries and it has brought in fans that may have heard the name but hadn’t experienced the music yet. Given the new album’s themes, “I Am Not Okay” is an excellent introduction.
Jessica Nicholson: This has the feel of a signature hit for Jelly Roll. The message in his music is hitting at the right time, in an era where people in general are more comfortable with being open about their struggles and weaknesses. People are also finding community in daring to be open about mental health—something the song itself dives right into the center of on the line “I know I can’t be the only one/ Who’s holding on for dear life.” As so many are battling mental health issues including anxiety and depression due to all kinds of factors, from health struggles, job losses and the general runup to the U.S. presidential election, this song seems to encapsulate what so many people are feeling at this moment, while also encouraging those listeners.
Andrew Unterberger: Yeah, this one feels like it could end up being next-level for him — the chorus is extremely sturdy and the message transcends genre in a way you certainly couldn’t say about every major country hit. I wouldn’t be surprised if it crept into the top 10 of the chart before the holiday rush hits at year’s end.
4. One conspicuous thing about Jelly Roll’s recent collaborator list is the diversity of artists and genres represented — including mgk, Jessie Murph, Eminem and Falling in Reverse. Who’s an artist who Jelly Roll hasn’t teamed up with yet that you think could end up being a particularly interesting and/or successful new artistic partner for him?
Kyle Denis: Shaboozey. He and Jelly Roll cross genres so frequently and so naturally that I’m interested to see what they come up with – especially on a four-track EP where they can expand on their respective takes on country, hip-hop and rock. And for a bit more of a left-field choice, Leon Bridges.
Jason Lipshutz: I love the way Kacey Musgraves has both honed her aesthetic as well as figured out how to best complement that of others in recent years; look at how dynamic she is operating alongside Zach Bryan on “I Remember Everything” and Noah Kahan on “She Calls Me Back.” It’d be a blast to hear how her gentle delivery contrasts with Jelly Roll’s gruffer tone on a collaboration.
Melinda Newman: The great thing about his collaborations is so many of them seem out of left field and he seems genuinely open and able to blend with almost anyone from any genre.. I would love to hear him team up with a really strong woman with a powerhouse voice like P!nk and have them go toe-to-toe.
Jessica Nicholson: Jelly Roll and Teddy Swims would be interesting to hear together, given their vast influences and solid voices. Otherwise, it would be great to hear Jelly Roll and Kelly Clarkson team up on an original song, after they performed “I Am Not Okay” on The Kelly Clarkson Show.
Andrew Unterberger: We know Jelly Roll can do power balladry with the best of them — but can that mighty voice command the dance floor? Let’s put him together with Fred again.. or Jamie xx — or if he wants go classic with it, maybe Nile Rodgers — and see what kind of results they can come up with.
5. Who’s another rising country artist besides Jelly Roll who you think could be in line for their own first No. 1 album in the not-too-distant future?
Kyle Denis: Lainey Wilson!
Jason Lipshutz: Lainey Wilson scored her first top 10 album in August with Whirlwind — so while it may be a little while until we get a follow-up, Wilson has ascended so rapidly that I think she’ll challenge for the top spot of the Billboard 200 whenever she returns. Until then? We’re blasting “Hang Tight Honey,” folks.
Melinda Newman: Megan Moroney’s star continues to rise and her most recent album debuted at No. 3 on Top Country Albums and No. 9 on the Billboard 200. If her trajectory stays its current course, it feels like she could snag the No. 1 spot next go-round. Also on the rise are Tucker Wetmore and Zach Top.
Jessica Nicholson: Not exactly country, but if we’re looking for a rising artist from the heartland, let’s say Chappell Roan. Chappell’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess debuted last year and has since risen to No. 2 on the Billboard 200. In that time, her career has continued to ascend, thanks to “Good Luck, Babe!,” Chappell’s Midwest Princess Tour and her recent record-breaking show at Lollapalooza Chicago. Chappell seems poised to soon ring the bell at No. 1.
Andrew Unterberger: Megan Moroney seems like she’s on her way there, combining classic and modern country elements in both her music and her promotion in ways that usually lead to major stardom. She feels like as sure a futures bet as anyone in country right now.
It’s been nearly 20 years since Coldplay first topped the Billboard 200 with their 2005 album X&Y — and while the music world (and the rock world in particular) has changed over dramatically countless times in the years since, it’s 2024 and the band is once again back on top.
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Moon Music, the band’s 10th studio album, debuts at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 this week, with 120,000 first-week units — their first LP to top the chart since Ghost Stories in 2014. Meanwhile, the album’s “We Pray” single, featuring Little Simz, Burna Boy, Elyanna & TINI debuts at No. 86 on the Billboard Hot 100, joining “feelslikeimfallinginlove” as the second Hot 100-charting hit from the set.
Why was this album able to become the band’s first Billboard 200 No. 1 in a decade? And how has Coldplay managed to stay relevant on the chart for over 20 years now? Billboard staffers answer these questions and more below.
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1. Coldplay’s Moon Music debuts at No. 1 this week — their first release in a decade to top the Billboard 200 — with 120,000 units moved. What do you think the biggest reason behind the album’s stellar chart performance is?
Katie Atkinson: I’m crediting the awareness campaign. Even the most casual TV viewer likely saw Coldplay at some point on their screens in the past two weeks, from SNL to the morning shows to (checks notes) QVC? Sure. Chris Martin was even popping up doing karaoke in costume in Las Vegas or joining his band for a surprise mini-set inside’s Brooklyn’s Rough Trade record store, so even if you don’t own a TV, you might have just seen him around. After scoring a No. 1 Hot 100 hit with the BTS collab “My Universe” but failing to top the Billboard 200 with its parent album Music of the Spheres back in 2021, it definitely felt surprising to see this one go straight to the top – but the full-force promo campaign had to be part of it.
Katie Bain: No shade, but I haven’t actively paid attention to Coldplay since Viva La Vida. That said, I feel like I was absorbing them and this new album through osmosis in this album cycle via their SNL appearance, general media presence and the cultural consciousness bump created by working with Little Simz, Burna Boy, TINI and Elyanna. If they’ve worked their way into my world and ears, I’m guessing they’ve worked their way into a lot of others as well. Plus “We Pray” is a pretty cool song.
Kyle Denis: My mind immediately goes to their blockbuster tour and two-decade-strong relationship with their fans. At this point, Coldplay is effectively a legacy act that can still corral fans to buy new material. They don’t necessarily need a hit like “Hymn for the Weekend” or “Viva La Vida” to shift copies of a new album. Of course, it also helps that Moon Music serves as the sequel to 2021’s Music of the Spheres, which hit No. 4 on the Billboard 200, earned four Grammy nominations and spawned a Hot 100 chart-topper in “My Universe” (with BTS). Just as they tapped BTS and Selena Gomez for their last album – and megastars like Beyoncé and Rihanna for earlier LPs – Coldplay also used collaborations with some of the brightest stars across buzzy genres like UK hip-hop and Afrobeats (Burna Boy, Little Simz, Ayra Starr, etc.) to draw additional sets of eyes to Moon Music.
There was also the week-long string of pop-up listening parties held around the world to coincide with the album’s release on Oct. 4, as well as a Record Store Day collaboration in the States for indie retailers on Oct. 1. Given the focus on physical album sales, it’s no surprise that Moon Music sold 106,000 pure copies, including 29,000 in vinyl sales – their highest ever sales week on that format.
Jason Lipshutz: The continued stature of Coldplay, who have been playing stadiums for years now and developing a loyal fanbase that bridges generations. Although Moon Music is their first No. 1 album since 2014, every full-length in between has reached the top 10, and 2021’s Music of the Spheres also returned the band to the top of the Hot 100 with their BTS team-up “My Universe.” Moon Music partially capitalized on a quiet release week to secure a No. 1 debut, but it’s not like Coldplay needed a big comeback — they’ve been active in popular rock throughout this century, and crossing into the mainstream when needed.
Andrew Unterberger: I’m not totally sure what happened on this album cycle to make Moon Music more of a sales hit than Music of the Spheres, so I wonder if they were just smarter with their variety of physical releases for the album — and maybe if fans were moved enough by the sustainable, eco-friendly design of their records and packaging to buy a couple copies where previously they might not have. But I dunno!
2. “We Pray” (No. 87) is the lone debut from the album on the Hot 100 this week, joining “feelslikeimfallinginlove” (No. 81), which debuted a few months ago. Do either of them seem like they have potential to grow into bigger hits now that the album is out?
Katie Atkinson: After seeing it performed on SNL alongside “We Pray,” I’m going to go with “All My Love” as the potential sleeper hit from Moon Music. I could see adult pop radio picking it up and following a path to a similarly earnest Coldplay ballad like “Fix You.”
Katie Bain: With the global nature of all the artists involved (Africa, Europe, the Middle East and South America) it seems like “We Pray” could gain traction in other territories, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see this one become a bigger, wider hit. Also I think this one might grow among listeners who might not initially give a new Coldplay song a chance but then give a second look at the artists involved and realize that this one kind of bangs.
Kyle Denis: Not particularly. They might play well with AAA radio, but I don’t see either song growing into bigger hits.
Jason Lipshutz: Like a lot of Coldplay anthems, “feelslikeimfallinginlove” snuck up on me as a durable hit with a chipper chorus — maybe not as enthralling as “Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall” or “Adventure of a Lifetime,” but agreeable enough to earn alt-radio spins and get added to streaming playlists full of new-school love songs. I could see the single continue to grow — especially if it gets scooped up for a TV or movie synch, with Chris Martin’s “Feels like! I’m falling in l-o-o-ove!” soundtracking a first kiss as the camera lifts into the sky.
Andrew Unterberger: Both are pretty strong songs, so maybe all they need is a spark to catch fire — but generally, they feel more like 2010s hits than 2020s hits to me.
3. Coldplay’s span of No. 1 albums now reaches nearly two decades, all the way back to 2005’s X&Y. What’s the biggest thing that has allowed the band to have the kind of commercial longevity that’s proven so rare for 21st century rock bands?
Katie Atkinson: 100 percent, it’s their live shows. I vividly remember when “Clocks” came out in 2002, from A Rush of Blood to the Head, and it felt like it turned Coldplay from an unplugged piano-forward band to a laser-light-show stadium act overnight (with the piano still very forward). While they’ve released a mixture of understated ballads and bombastic rockers since then, and added a lot more electronic sounds as well, they’ve leaned into their reputation as a must-see touring act, which has sustained their fanbase and the excitement around them in the decades since.
Katie Bain: Again, no shade, but Coldplay’s sound has been more or less sonically consistent (bright, hopeful, sophisticated and pop-adjacent without ever being overly saccharine or overtly challenging) and thus generally palatable for a very wide, very global audience. And while I haven’t always listened to every new Coldplay album, they’ve usually managed to clock one big monster hit from each of their LPs, which has helped them maintain relevance even among people who might not be actively following them. They’ve also been savvy in following genre trends and working with the biggest artists in those fields over the years.
Kyle Denis: They’ve been willing to evolve with changes in the music landscape by incorporating new sounds and styles that keep them, at the very least, adjacent to the mainstream without completely compromising their brand and identity. It also helps that Chris Martin is a bonafide star and celebrity outside of Coldplay, so there’s always some level of attention on the band.
Jason Lipshutz: Coldplay has always been highly aware of pop trends, and have worked hard to find common ground between their sweeping, stadium-ready rock and what is dominating top 40. Maybe longtime fans blanched at collaborations with artists like The Chainsmokers, BTS and Avicii — but those songs were effective, and produced three more top 10 hits for the band, at a time when most rock quartets were not coming close to the Hot 100’s upper reaches. And these team-ups have generally happened without Coldplay betraying their core sound or deserting their diehard listeners, making them a savvy group that can still keep their center intact.
Andrew Unterberger: They’ve never stopped trying, which is commendable — look at most other huge rock bands when they hit the 20-year mark, and they’ve usually already codified into the band they’re going to be the rest of their career. Coldplay keep shape-shifting and retinkering and finding new collaborators to take their sound and their audience to new places. You don’t know what you’re going to get with a new Coldplay album — or how much you’re necessarily gonna be into it — but you know it’s probably not gonna be the same as the last one, which makes it always worth checking out.
4. Where Coldplay has ended up musically a quarter-century into their career is obviously very different than where they started at the turn of the millennium. Are you impressed with the scope of their evolution, or do you think they’ve gotten a little too far away from what initially made them great?
Katie Atkinson: I recently revisited their 2000 debut album Parachutes and was struck by how stark it is. There’s so much silence and so little production. So yes, they’ve come a lifetime from that first album, 24 years later, but there are some core tenants that have never left – namely, the sincerity and the melodies. Their music has always been unabashedly earnest, and any day 1 fans who are still sticking with the band are hanging on to that heart-on-your-sleeve authenticity.
Katie Bain: I’ll always yearn for another “Clocks” or “God Put a Smile Upon Your Face” or “Talk” and the indie rock qualities that made those songs special and era-defining. Obviously the bulk of their stuff since then has drifted from that sound, but I guess you’ve got to give them credit for subsequently carving out a durable, broadly palatable sound while also trend-hopping among the hot genre of the moment with their EDM tracks “Sky Full of Stars” with Avicii and The Chainsmokers, the K-Pop juggernaut “My Universe” with BTS, etc. A lot of early Coldplay listeners would likely say that these songs aren’t totally our thing, but we can still sing along to every one of them.
Kyle Denis: I think it’s a little bit of both. When I sit and think of the full breadth of their catalog and all the different spaces they’ve ventured into, it’s undoubtedly impressive. I think their last two records have found them moving a bit too far away from what initially drew me to them, but I think their almost chameleonic approach to pop and rock music are still on display – just not in my preferred iteration.
Jason Lipshutz: As a big Coldplay defender, I’ve appreciated watching them grow and experiment in ways that have prevented them from sounding stale or predictable, in a manner that most of their contemporaries haven’t been able to over the past decade. Some of those forays have not worked, and that’s fine; I’d rather Chris Martin and co. keep shape-shifting into different pop-rock modes than double down on the same formula endlessly. And when their change-ups have really taken off, they’ve complemented their early sound in satisfying ways — it’s why “Yellow,” “Paradise” and “Higher Power” can all be stacked next to each other in a stadium setlist and not feel too disjointed.
Andrew Unterberger: I admire their consistent sonic evolution, but as one of the few-but-mighty devout Ghost Stories supporters, I do wish Chris Martin would try to be a little more personal in his songwriting rather than always trying to go for the universal. But when you do universal as well as Coldplay as historically, it’s an understandable default instinct.
5. There’s been a lot of great Moon Music in pop history — what’s your favorite “Moon” song or album?
Katie Atkinson: Have to go with “Harvest Moon” from Neil Young. And actually, I think Chris Martin & co. could do a really lovely cover of it.
Katie Bain: Nick Drake’s Pink Moon. Also Feist’s “My Moon, My Man” and the Boys Noize remix of that song.
Kyle Denis: Obviously, “Moon River” — and I prefer the Frank Ocean version. I’ll also give a shoutout to Teejay’s “Moon Light,” Brandy’s Full Moon LP, and the timeless “Blue Moon” — any a cappella rendition will do.
Jason Lipshutz: Let’s go with a pair of early ‘00s indie masterpieces: Modest Mouse’s The Moon & Antarctica for album, The Microphones’ “The Moon” for song.
Andrew Unterberger: I probably gotta go with one of the great guitar epics in underground rock history, Television’s “Marquee Moon.” But honestly, goddamn, there have been so many great moon songs and albums! Shout out to the moon, a criminally underappreciated muse.