This week, Morgan Wallen's I'm the Problem sits at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart yet again. But the two titles just below it are making the most noise: At No. 3, former YouTube star Conan Gray hits a new career peak with Wishbone. And at No. 2, KPop Demon Hunters pulls off something no soundtrack has ever accomplished: It's landed four top 10 singles simultaneously. Not even Saturday Night Fever or Waiting to Exhale ever pulled that off — though, to be fair, the world of streaming services was still decades away.
TOP ALBUMS
Last week, another wave of top 10 debuts washed up on shore, as the Billboard 200 albums chart welcomed new entries by Gunna, MGK, Jonas Brothers and Babymetal. This week, Gunna remains on a sunny patch of dry land — The Last Wun slips a single spot, to No. 4 — while the other three are sent hurtling back to the turbid seas whence they came. (Babymetal went from "the first all-Japanese band ever to hit the top 10" to "off the charts entirely" in just seven days, but it'll always have that one week at No. 9.)
That's consistent with the charts' general pattern in recent weeks, in which several new albums debut in the top 10, only to be jettisoned a week later by an even fresher crop of records. This week, however, the jettisoning really only benefits one debut: Conan Gray's Wishbone, which enters this week's chart at No. 3. Gray has visited the top 10 twice before, but Wishbone is the highest-charting album of his career. It's a nice moment for Gray, who's worked his way up from the YouTube content mines to become a pop star in his own right.
But Wishbone is the only debut in this week's top 10, while — as noted above — three of last week's debuts plummet precipitously. So what's filling the void?
In this case, the answer lies in two of 2024's biggest hits, albeit for different reasons. Billie Eilish released a special vinyl edition of Hit Me Hard and Soft to commemorate the album's one-year anniversary. That helped the album climb from No. 24 — it had left the top 10 as of this past June — to No. 6.
Then there's Taylor Swift's The Tortured Poets Department, which leaps from No. 18 to No. 10. That blockbuster wasn't rereleased in some fresh iteration — no new vinyl, no fresh bonus tracks, nothing like that. But Swift did recently announce the release of a new album called The Life of a Showgirl (out Oct. 3), which she promoted on Travis Kelce's New Heights podcast during the eligibility window for this week's charts. With a following the size of Swift's, a simple act of prerelease promo is enough to move an album back into the top 10.
With Morgan Wallen's I'm the Problem sitting at No. 1 for a 12th nonconsecutive week, KPop Demon Hunters appears positioned to imminently complete its run to the top of the Billboard 200. Why? For one, the trend lines in the albums' respective streaming numbers have been headed in this direction for weeks now, and the two titles are already extremely close. For another, a sing-along edition of KPop Demon Hunters just got a successful theatrical release — and the word-of-mouth boost that comes with it.
But the biggest reason of all for KPop Demon Hunters to expect a seat at No. 1 next week? The soundtrack's label just finally released a CD edition, and those first-week sales numbers ought to be more than enough to close the gap on their own. It's a matter of time.
TOP SONGS
As noted above, the runway is now clear for the KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack to assume its place atop the Billboard 200 albums chart. But the album picks up yet another significant milestone this week — one that no other soundtrack has accomplished in the history of the Billboard charts. It's got four singles in the Hot 100's top 10 simultaneously, which has never happened since the Hot 100 premiered in the summer of 1958.
Last week, Alex Warren's "Ordinary" reclaimed the No. 1 spot, thanks in part to the release of a live version Warren recorded at Lollapalooza with country star Luke Combs. This week, "Ordinary" slides back down to No. 2 and HUNTR/X's "Golden" — consistently the KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack's top-performing hit, at least so far — resumes its run at the top of the Hot 100.
Two more songs from the soundtrack — both by HUNTR/X's screen rivals in Saja Boys — now reside in the top five: "Your Idol," which holds at No. 4, and the sugary earworm "Soda Pop," at No. 5. Then, HUNTR/X lands a new entry in the top 10: "How It's Done," which leaps from No. 14 to No. 10. (Three more songs from the soundtrack turn up in the top 25, as well: "What It Sounds Like," "Free" and "Takedown." It'd take a massive surge to cram a fifth KPDH song into the top 10 — "What It Sounds Like" is ranked the highest, at No. 20 — but it's far from impossible in the coming weeks.)
The explosion of KPop Demon Hunters songs has finally crowded one withered chestnut out of the top 10: Shaboozey's "A Bar Song (Tipsy)," which was in the midst of a record-tying 19-week run at No. 1 an entire calendar year ago, drops to No. 13 this week. (It's not even the highest-charting Shaboozey song anymore, with "Good News" jumping to No. 12.) Somehow, Teddy Swims' "Lose Control" still manages to hold at No. 7 as it extends its record-obliterating runs in the top 10 (75 weeks) and the Hot 100 (105 weeks, which means it's now in its third year on the chart). Unfortunately, "Lose Control" isn't likely to leave the top 10 until shortly after the release of Taylor Swift's The Life of a Showgirl in October.
WORTH NOTING
This isn't to rain on KPop Demon Hunters' parade — it's a great and fun movie, and the songs are terrific! — but a few of its statistical milestones ought to be put in perspective. Yes, no soundtrack in history had ever posted four simultaneous top 10 hits prior to this week. But "history" looked a lot different prior to the streaming era.
Consider the blockbusters that came before it. The soundtrack that's posted the most top 10 hits in history — not simultaneously — is Waiting to Exhale, which holds the all-time record with five. That film, which starred Whitney Houston and boasted a murderer's row of additional soundtrack superstars (Mary J. Blige! Toni Braxton! Brandy!), came out in 1995.
Three other soundtracks have produced four top 10 hits: Saturday Night Fever, from 1977; Grease, from 1978; and Purple Rain, from 1984. As noted last week, Saturday Night Fever and Waiting to Exhale even landed three songs in the top 10 at the same time. These numbers are impressive but unsurprising, given that we're talking about some of the most iconic and best-selling soundtracks ever released.
But the hits from these earlier movies weren't all released simultaneously. Before streaming, the charts were based on sales of vinyl singles (and, later on, songs sold on cassette and CD) and radio airplay. And labels generally maintained a system in which they were extremely deliberate about pacing the release of commercial singles. It took a wild phenomenon — Beatlemania, for example, or the Bee Gees' late-'70s assault on the charts — to create a pileup of singles from one album near the top of the Hot 100.
Nowadays? It just takes a great big surge of streaming — like, for example, the one that gave Taylor Swift the top 14 songs in the country in the aftermath of The Tortured Poets Department's release last year. Just something to keep in mind when contextualizing not only KPop Demon Hunters, but also the arrival of Swift's The Life of a Showgirl in October. It's a different world on the charts, and every new milestone is taking place in an ecosystem that would have been unrecognizable 15 or 20 years ago.
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