There’s new blood at or near the top of both the albums and singles charts this week. After 15 nonconsecutive weeks in which Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department topped the Billboard 200 albums chart, there’s a fresh juggernaut at No. 1: Post Malone’s guest-packed country epic F-1 Trillion, which knocks Swift down to No. 3. Speaking of “star-packed” and “No. 3,” that’s where Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars’ “Die with a Smile” enters the Hot 100 singles chart — a strong debut, but not strong enough to displace the two-headed behemoth of Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” and Post Malone’s “I Had Some Help,” which features Morgan Wallen.
TOP ALBUMS
For the past few weeks, Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department has fended off challengers vying for the top spot on the Billboard 200, thanks in part to her sales-boosting tactic of releasing discount-priced digital variant editions. This time around, there was never any doubt: No. 1 belongs to Post Malone, whose F-1 Trillion dominated the competition in its first week on the chart. The super-sized album — which grew from 18 songs to 27 when the singer dropped a special “Long Bed” edition the day F-1 Trillion came out — is only the latest chart triumph for Post Malone, one of the world’s most reliable hitmakers.
Post Malone is popping all over the charts this week, including elsewhere on the Billboard 200: His greatest-hits set The Diamond Collection (named for the RIAA certification of blockbuster singles, of which he owns more than any artist ever) leaps from No. 161 to No. 17, suggesting that a brand-new 27-song dose of Post Malone didn’t whet every appetite on its own.
Post Malone’s return arrived just in time to freeze Chappell Roan’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess out of the top spot. Though that slowly ascending album holds steady this week at No. 2, it finally surpassed The Tortured Poets Department, which fell from No. 1 to No. 3. From there, most of the Top 10 simply slides down a single spot to accommodate Post Malone: Morgan Wallen’s One Thing at a Time (No. 3 to No. 4), Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft (No. 4 to No. 5), Zach Bryan’s The Great American Bar Scene (No. 5 to No. 6), Charli XCX’s Brat (No. 6 to No. 7), Noah Kahan’s Stick Season (No. 7 to No. 8) and Morgan Wallen’s Dangerous: The Double Album (No. 8 to No. 9). Zach Bryan’s self-titled 2023 album holds at No. 10.
TOP SONGS
Major albums have come and gone all summer, but the upper region of the Billboard Hot 100 has remained remarkably static, with only minor fluctuations across the Top 10 from week to week. But the latest chart finally sports a new entry from two of the flashiest names in the business: Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars have teamed up for “Die with a Smile,” a dramatic ballad that debuts at No. 3. For a summer dominated by fresh faces (Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter), country (Post Malone, Morgan Wallen) and fresh faces in country (Shaboozey), the presence of such venerated chart-toppers can’t help but feel strangely reassuring.
Still, even Gaga and Mars’ combined powers couldn’t dislodge the two biggest hits of summer 2024: Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” sits at No. 1 for a seventh nonconsecutive week — it’s now resided atop the Hot 100 for more weeks than any other song this year — while Post Malone and Morgan Wallen’s “I Had Some Help” stays locked in at No. 2 yet again.
It feels silly to describe Gaga and Mars as “new blood,” given how often they’ve dominated the Hot 100 (34 Top 10 hits between the two of them, not counting their new collaboration), but it’s still nice to encounter a big, brand-new song on the charts after all this time. You won’t find such a thing anywhere else on the Top 10, either, as Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” slides from No. 3 to No. 4, Billie Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather” holds at No. 5 and Chappell Roan’s “Good Luck, Babe!” climbs from No. 7 to No. 6. Sabrina Carpenter holds down two of the Top 10’s remaining spots — “Espresso” drops from No. 4 to No. 7 and “Please Please Please” slips from No. 8 to No. 9 — though she’s a candidate to rebound next week thanks to the arrival of her new album, Short n’ Sweet. Tommy Richman’s “Million Dollar Baby” drops from No. 6 to No. 8, while Teddy Swims’ unkillable “Lose Control” slides from No. 9 to No. 10.
WORTH NOTING
Post Malone didn’t just make his presence felt on the albums chart; thanks to huge numbers of people streaming F-1 Trillion, he’s also absolutely everywhere on the Billboard Hot 100. You already know about “I Had Some Help,” which has sat at No. 2 long enough to start renting out hotels on the space. You might even be familiar with the album’s other singles, like “Guy for That,” with Luke Combs (which rises from No. 36 to No. 17), or “Pour Me a Drink,” with Blake Shelton (up from No. 30 to No. 13).
But check this out: There are 100 spots on the Billboard Hot 100 — don’t check my math, I already counted — and Post Malone occupies 19 of them. That’s the three aforementioned singles, plus Taylor Swift’s “Fortnight” (which features his guest vocal) and now a whopping 15 debuts, ranging from No. 23 (“Wrong Ones,” featuring Tim McGraw) all the way down to the solo track “Right About You,” at No. 88.
Of course, given how many of Post Malone’s new songs have prominent features by country stars, the rise of F-1 Trillion has placed all sorts of names back on the Hot 100. Some of them have been there quite a bit in recent months — ERNEST, Lainey Wilson, Chris Stapleton — while others, like Brad Paisley and Tim McGraw, return after longer absences. Whether or not you’re ready for some football, the most seasonally appropriate debut would have to belong to Hank Williams Jr., who appears on “Finer Things,” at No. 42.
Copyright 2024 NPR
