The late Vicente Fernández returns to Billboard’s Top Latin Albums and Regional Mexican Albums charts a week after his death, with four titles surging back on the Dec. 25-dated lists.
On Top Latin Albums, the four albums (Historia de Un Idolo, Vol. I; Historia de Un Idolo, Vol. II; Para Siempre and The Living Legend) re-enter at Nos. 2, 11, 15 and 24, respectively. On Regional Mexican Albums, the same four titles re-enter at Nos. 1, 2, 4 and 7. All four albums were originally released between 2000 and 2007. On Top Latin Albums, all four initially peaked in the top 10 (with Idolo, Vol. I and Para Siempre both hitting No. 1 — the latter for 18 weeks), and on Regional Mexican Albums, all but the No. 2-peaking The Living Legend reached No. 1.
In total on Top Latin Albums, Fernandez claimed six career No. 1s, while on Regional Mexican Albums, he notched 17 (the most among solo artists).
The Top Latin Albums and Regional Mexican Albums charts rank the most popular Latin and regional Mexican albums of the week in the U.S. based on multimetric 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.
On the new Top Latin Albums chart, Historia de Un ídolo, Vol. I re-enters at No. 2 with 13,000 equivalent album units earned in the week ending Dec. 16, according to MRC Data. Most of the album’s sum derives from streaming activity (equaling 17.5 million on-demand streams of the set’s 17 tracks), an achievement for El Chente as most of his albums were released in the pre-streaming days. The remaining 1,000 units comprise album sales and TEA units.
The album’s successor, Historia de Un Idolo, Vol. II, comes in second, reappearing at No. 11 on Top Latin Albums with 7,000 equivalent album units. Of that sum, SEA units comprise 6,000, while the album sales and TEA units comprise the remaining 1,000 units. The two other sets resurfacing include Para Siempre at No. 15 (6,000 equivalent album units) and The Living Legend at No. 24 (3,000).
All four sets concurrently re-enter the Regional Mexican Albums’ top 10, including Para Siempre at No. 4. The album spent 18 weeks at No. 1 on the list between 2007-09. That’s the fourth-most weeks atop the survey for an album by a regional Mexican male solo act, trailing Christian Nodal’s Me Dejé Llevar (73 weeks at No. 1), Natanael Cano’s Corridos Tumbados (31 weeks at the lead), and Joan Sebastian’s Con Tambora (23 weeks in charge).
Here’s a recap of Fernandez’s re-entries on Regional Mexican Albums:
Ranking, Title
No. 1, Historia de Un ídolo, Vol. I (debuted at No.1 in 2000)
No. 2, Historia de Un ídolo, Vol. II (debuted at No. 2 in 2002)
No. 4, Para Siempre (debuted at No. 1 in 2007)
No. 7 The Living Legend (debuted at No. 2 in 2006)
In addition to the four album re-entries, some of Fernandez’s songs have found strong streaming reception among fans. As five of his classics debut on the all-metric Hot Latin Songs chart, Fernández extends his record for the most career entries among all regional Mexican solo acts, with a total of 65, just one title short from Los Tigres del Norte’s 66 titles.
With “Volver, Volver” arriving at No. 13, El Rey of Ranchera secures his highest entry since his first chart appearance in 1987. It’s concurrently his highest ranking since “El Último Beso” topped the chart in 2009. “Volver” generated 2.72 million streams in the week ending Dec. 16, enough to bow at No. 24 on Latin Streaming Songs, and is the top-seller of the five tracks, with 2,000 downloads in the same period. Let’s look at his Hot Latin Songs performance:
Ranking, Title
No. 13, “Volver, Volver”
No. 14, “Acá Entre Nos”
No. 16, “Por Tu Maldito Amor”
No. 17, “El Rey” (re-entry)
No. 18, “Mujeres Divinas”
Back on Fernández’s album accomplishments, on the all-genre Billboard 200, Historia de Un Idolo, Vol. I starts at No. 95 to secure his best career placement since Necesito de Ti’s No. 58 launch in 2009.
