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Joker 2

Lady Gaga scores her third No. 1 on Billboard’s Jazz Albums and Traditional Jazz Albums charts, as Harlequin debuts atop both tallies (dated Oct. 12). The companion set to her film Joker: Folie à Deux, earned 25,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in the week ending Oct. 3, according to Luminate. Of that sum, 16,000 are traditional album sales.

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Gaga previously topped both rankings with her collaborative albums with Tony Bennett: Love for Sale (in 2021) and Cheek to Cheek (2014).

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Harlequin earns the biggest debut week, by units earned, for any jazz album, or traditional jazz album, since Love for Sale earned 41,000 units in its opening week (Oct. 16, 2021-dated charts).  

Equivalent album units comprise album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Each unit equals one album sale, or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an album. All Oct. 12, 2024-dated charts will be posted in full on Billboard‘s website on Tuesday, Oct. 8. For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both X, formerly known as Twitter, and Instagram.

Of Harlequin’s first-week units, streaming equivalent album-units comprise nearly 9,000 – equaling 11.34 million official on-demand streams of the album’s songs. The latter figure marks the biggest debut streaming week for a jazz album in over a year, since Laufey’s Bewitched bowed with 22.36 million clicks (Sept. 23, 2023-dated chart).

Harlequin also debuts at No. 20 on the overall Billboard 200 and No. 3 on both Vinyl Albums and Top Album Sales.

Jazz Albums and Traditional Jazz Albums rank the week’s most popular jazz and traditional jazz albums, respectively, by equivalent album units earned. The Billboard 200 ranks the week’s most popular albums across all genres, by units. Vinyl Albums and Top Album Sales tally the week’s top-selling vinyl albums, and overall albums, by traditional album sales.

Also on Top Album Sales, Billy Strings’ Highway Prayer debuts at No. 1 with 19,000 sold in its first week – the act’s biggest sales week ever. It’s also the first No. 1 for the artist. Chappell Roan’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess slips one spot to No. 2 (18,000; down 67%), Sabrina Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet is steady at No. 4 (14,000; down 3%), Katy Perry’s 143 falls 2-5 (9,000; down 77%), Luke Bryan’s Mind of a Country Boy bows at No. 6 (nearly 8,000), Taylor Swift’s chart-topping Folklore vaults 33-7 (7,500; up 153% after a stock replenishment of its CD at retail), Stray Kids’ former leader ATE is a non-mover at No. 8 (7,000; down 6%), P1Harmony’s Sad Song falls 3-9 (6,000; down 77%) and Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft climbs 15-10 (nearly 6,000; up 8%).

Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart ranks the top-selling albums of the week based only on traditional album sales. The chart’s history dates back to May 25, 1991, the first week Billboard began tabulating charts with electronically monitored piece count information from SoundScan, now Luminate. Pure album sales were the sole measurement utilized by the Billboard 200 albums chart through the list dated Dec. 6, 2014, after which that chart switched to a methodology that blends album sales with track equivalent album units and streaming equivalent album units.

Joker: Folie à Deux is off to a rough start at the box office.
Todd Phillips’ R-rated sequel, starring Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker and Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn, earned a lower-than-expected $20 million on Friday (Oct. 4), including $7 million in previews, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Rival studios project that the Warner Bros. film will open below $50 million.

Contributing to the troubled box office numbers is Joker 2‘s dismal CinemaScore from audiences. The musical film received a failing D grade, marking the first time in history that a Hollywood comic book movie received such a low score, THR reports.

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“For a movie running two-and-a-quarter hours, Folie à Deux feels narratively a little thin and at times dull,” The Hollywood Reporter‘s chief film critic David Rooney wrote following the movie’s world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September.

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Heading into the opening weekend, Joker: Folie à Deux — the sequel to 2019’s Oscar-winning Joker — was expected to earn between $50 million and $60 million. The original film debuted significantly higher on its opening weekend, bringing in $96.2 million and receiving a B+ CinemaScore. The first Joker went on to make just over $1 billion at the global box office.

Joker 2 follows Phoenix’s return as Arthur Fleck (aka the Joker), who is now confined in Arkham Asylum. There, he meets Gaga’s Harleen “Lee” Quinzel, and they form a powerfully chaotic bond with the goal of causing mayhem across Gotham City. 

In addition to her acting role in the film, Gaga recorded an entire Joker-themed album, titled Harlequin, in which she channels her character on a series of classic covers and a few originals. The surprise companion project, released ahead of Joker 2 on Sept. 27, was recorded alongside the sessions for the superstar’s upcoming as-yet-untitled seventh studio album. Her new set is scheduled for release in February, with a first single dropping in October.

In a brand new teaser for Joker: Folie à Deux, Lady Gaga‘s Harley Quinn tells Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck, “You can do anything you want” — which probably isn’t the best thing to say to someone with an unpredictable neurological disorder who’s currently institutionalized for committing several murders. But alas, the pop superstar’s character only […]

In Joker: Folie à Deux, Lady Gaga‘s Harley Quinn loves Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck exactly the way he is — ’cause baby, he was born this way.
One month ahead of the premiere of Todd Phillips’ Joker sequel, Warner Brothers dropped a new teaser showcasing how the pop superstar’s character enables the iconic DC Comics villain’s descent into madness. In the 30-second clip, Phoenix cackles while sitting in the back of a police car, standing in the rain at a facility and, at one point, attacking a judge in a courtroom, the volume of his creepy laughter slowly increasing throughout.

“He’s a monster,” an unseen voice says, while another adds, “This is a very disturbed individual.”

But as Joker is swarmed with press and adoring fans, Gaga counters, “He’s not sick! He’s perfect.”

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Set to hit theaters Oct. 4, Folie à Deux will show Fleck awaiting trial for his crimes as Joker. While institutionalized, he meets Quinn, and the pair embark on a chaotic musical journey that leaves viewers wondering what’s real and what’s imagined.

In a full-length trailer posted in July, for instance, the two characters waltz to Frank Sinatra’s “When You’re Smiling” in glamorous outfits before taking the stage of a 1960s-esque variety show, both wearing their signature clown face paint. “I got the sneaking suspicion we’re not giving the people what they want,” Joker says into an old-fashioned microphone in the trailer, to which Quinn replies, “It’s OK, baby — let’s give the people what they want.”

The teaser comes a couple weeks after Gaga dropped “Die With a Smile” with Bruno Mars, her first proper single since 2022’s “Hold My Hand” from the Top Gun: Maverick soundtrack. The duet debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Watch Gaga enable Joker as Harley Quinn below.