On Wednesday night (Oct. 28), Olivia Rodrigo sent both millennial and Gen Z hearts aflutter by posting a live clip from My Chemical Romance‘s set at Queens, NY’s CitiField on her IG Stories. But the home of the Mets might not be the only place where Rodrigo and MCR might be seen mixing it up this autumn.
The emo greats are expected to make a huge surge on the Billboard charts next week with their 2006 masterwork The Black Parade. The still-beloved album remains frequently in the mix for the BB charts 20 years later — it sits at No. 139 on the Billboard 200 on this week’s chart (dated Oct. 31), in its 161st week total on the listing — but on Friday (Oct. 23), it received the extra boost of a 20th anniversary reissue, activating the band’s still incredibly active fanbase and making it a very interesting race for next week’s top spot.
The Black Parade (20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition) boasts six bonus cuts in addition to the 14 tracks that comprise the LP’s standard edition — three B-sides from the Black Parade era, as well as three live tracks. Those should help drive some extra streams to the set, but will really be driving increased activity for the set is the set’s physical reissue, which includes a whopping 15 new vinyl variants (including many retail and d2c-exclusive editions), as well as multiple new variants on CD and cassette. (Anniversary reissues have played a larger role than usual in the Billboard 200’s top tier the past few months, with old albums by Beyoncé (B’Day), The Beatles (Rubber Soul) and Mac Miller (The Divine Feminine) all returning to the top 10 — though none truly challenging for the top spot.)
Those new editions are expected to result in robust sales numbers for the set, which remains the most cherished by fans in the MCR catalog, and one of the most acclaimed emo albums of all time. (It’s also one of just four albums released to date by the band in its quarter-century of existence; though the band has reassembled for multiple arena and stadium tours in the past decade — and has sporadically teased a potential new LP — its most recent album to date remains 2010’s Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys.)
Will it be enough to get the set to No. 1? That’s the big question for chartwatchers and MCR fans, as it would mark a first for both the album and the band. Though Black Parade would end up taking the New Jersey quartet to a new level of stardom (and spawned the Billboard Hot 100 top 10 hit “Welcome to the Black Parade”), it debuted and peaked at No. 2 upon its 2006 release, selling 240,000 first-week copies but still getting stuck behind the soundtrack album to the Miley Cyrus-led Hannah Montana (281,000 copies). Danger Days ended up underperforming as the set’s follow-up, only making No. 8 on the Billboard 200 — two spots below 2004’s No. 6-peaking breakthrough Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge.
The set should have a real chance, as its competition among brand-new releases is minimal. Though there are new sets out from Josiah Queen, LISA and Anderson .Paak & Cordae that should each earn notable debuts, none are expected to contend for the Billboard 200’s top spot. So to clear the No. 1 spot, MCR will likely just have to outperform the current leader on the chart — belonging, of course, to Olivia Rodrigo.
Last week, Rodrigo’s you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love returned to No. 1 of the Billboard 200 (dated Oct. 24) for a third frame on top, after ruling for its first two weeks of release this summer. It was propelled back to pole position by the release of a buzzy new remix of its “Expectations,” co-starring Chappell Roan, which drove extra streams and sales to the set and resulted in it posting 75,000 units, up from 65,000 the week before. With “Expectations” naturally receding in consumption following its much-anticipated debut, next week’s unit tally for pretty sad should be more in line with the 65,000 it posted two weeks earlier.
Can Black Parade clear that performance? With the set’s big early sales, it should be fairly close — and may come down to the final days of the tracking week, and how many fans still motivated to purchase one or more copies remain in the MCR base. But certainly, their faithful will be rooting them on — possibly including Rodrigo herself.
