Morgan Wallen’s Dangerous: The Double Album spends a second straight week at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, earning 159,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in the week ending Jan. 21 (down 40%), according to MRC Data. The album arrived atop the list a week ago with 265,000 units.
Dangerous is the first country album to spend two weeks in a row at No. 1 since Chris Stapleton’s Traveller in 2015 (charts dated Nov. 21-28 that year), and the first country set to spend its first two weeks at No. 1 since Luke Bryan’s Kill the Lights that year (Aug. 29-Sept. 5, 2015). Traveller debuted on the chart dated May 23, 2015 at No. 14, and was off the chart by October. It then re-entered at No. 1 on Nov. 21, 2015, after Stapleton’s multiple wins and well-received performance on the Country Music Association Awards on Nov. 4.
The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption as measured in equivalent album units. Units comprise album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Each 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. The new Jan. 30, 2021-dated chart (where Dangerous holds at No. 1) will be posted in full on Billboard’s website on Jan. 26. For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both Twitter and Instagram.
Of Dangerous’ 159,000 equivalent album units earned in the tracking week ending Jan. 21, SEA units comprise 133,000 (down 26%, equaling 177.11 million on-demand streams of the album’s songs), album sales comprise 22,000 (down 70%) and TEA units comprise 4,000 (down 39%).
Since the Billboard 200 began ranking albums by equivalent album units in December of 2014, Dangerous is the first country set to log two weeks of at least 150,000 units.
Notably, in the last 12 months, Dangerous is just the fourth album, among all genres, to log at least two weeks of 150,000-plus units. It follows Taylor Swift’s Evermore, Juice WRLD’s Legends Never Die and Lil Uzi Vert’s Eternal Atake — all with two weeks each of 150,000-plus units.
Pop Smoke’s former No. 1 Shoot for the Stars Aim for the Moon rises 3-2 on the new Billboard 200 with 47,000 equivalent album units earned (up less than 1%). In the album’s 29 weeks on the chart, it has been absent from the top 10 for only one week (Jan. 2-dated chart, No. 11).
Why Don’t We nets a career-high chart rank as the group’s latest album The Good Times and the Bad Ones bows at No. 3. The set starts with 46,000 equivalent album units earned. Of that sum, 38,000 comprise album sales (making it the top-selling album of the week), 7,500 comprise SEA units (equating to 11.34 million on-demand streams of the album’s songs) and a little under 500 comprise TEA units.
Why Don’t We’s previous high on the Billboard 200 came with the quintet’s last album, 8 Letters, which debuted and peaked at No. 9 on the Sept. 15, 2018-dated chart.
The new album was led by the single “Fallin’,” which marked the act’s first Billboard Hot 100 hit, when it peaked at No. 37 on the Oct. 17, 2020, list. The track also marked the group’s fifth hit on the Pop Airplay chart, reaching No. 22 in November.
Taylor Swift’s former No. 1 Evermore dips 2-4 on the new Billboard 200 (41,000 equivalent album units earned; down 26%) and Ariana Grande’s previous leader Positions climbs 7-5 (39,000; up 17%).
As Republic Records is the distributing label for Dangerous, Shoot for the Stars …, Evermore and Positions, the company has four of the top five albums of the week. It’s the first time a label has claimed four-fifths of the top five since Republic itself did it on the Sept. 1, 2018-dated chart.
Lil Durk’s The Voice falls 5-6 on the new Billboard 200 with 37,000 equivalent album units earned (down 11%). Eminem’s former No. 1 Music to Be Murdered By jumps 19-7 with 33,000 units (up 51%) following the Jan. 15 release of the album’s deluxe reissue on CD. The deluxe edition, dubbed Music to Be Murdered By – Side B, added extra tracks to the year-old album and first dropped on digital retail and streamers on Dec. 18, 2020. A vinyl release of the deluxe package is due in August. (All versions of the album are tracked together on the chart.)
A trio of former No. 1s closes out the new top 10 on the Billboard 200, as The Weeknd’s After Hours falls 6-8 (33,000 equivalent album units; down 6%), Juice WRLD’s Legends Never Die is steady at No. 9 (32,000; up 3%) and Luke Combs’ What You See Is What You Get descends 8-10 (just under 32,000; up 1%).
