Billboard 200 Chart for October 10th, 2020

 I have always found it fun to look at the Billboard 200 charts for the top albums of a week and seeing what albums have debuted on the charts.  I recently looked at the charts for the week of October 10^th, 2020 (which considers the week of September 25^th-October 1^st) and found several albums with something I found interesting or unusual.  Since there were so many I was intrigued by, I want to discuss each of them with you.

 

Typically, I’m surprised when I see five albums debut in the top 10 in a single week.  In this particular week, there were 6 albums that debuted in the top 10 and several others on the top 200.  While I normally notice a couple albums that I find interesting listed in the charts, there are 11 albums that I found especially fascinating and would like to talk about.  This week has a combination of several oddities as well as signs of trends in music.  During this particular week, the Billboard 200 featured albums with controversy surrounding them, an artist that changed styles, an internet star turned musician, a K-Pop group, a weird metal band, a posthumous rerelease, a comeback, a partially delayed album, several albums that didn’t chart where I expected, and a Christmas album released in September.  All the albums listed were in their first week of charting, making this one of the most intriguing weeks I have ever seen on the Billboard charts.

 

All albums are listed in order of charting position during the week of October 10^th, 2020.

 

Ticket to My Downfall, Machine Gun Kelly (#1)

Despite the commercial success of all his previous albums and critical success of most, the release of the EP Binge might have ruined MGK’s reputation as a hip hop artist.  Binge was critically panned and the diss track “Rap Devil” wasn’t particularly well-received either.  Even though he seemed to redeem himself with the rap rock Hotel Diablo, the idea started to emerge that he was not a talented rapper.  While this is unfair in my opinion given his previous success, I guess this can happen when you diss Eminem.  With this release, MGK seems to have found his new niche:  pop punk music.  While I was skeptical about it at first, I should have had more confidence given Travis Barker’s (Blink-182) involvement in the project.  The ideologies of punk and hip hop have consistently intersected historically and there are several hip hop artists and rappers who either blend the genres or are influenced by punk, including Odd Future, Denzel Curry, Ho99o9, Death Grips, and Smokepurpp.  There has seemed to be a natural blend between hardcore punk and hip hop, but in recent years there have been crossovers between pop punk and hip hop, including collaborations involving Blink-182 and Fall Out Boy.  Barker has previously done work in hip hop and rap rock before so I didn’t expect MGK would shift styles.  While I haven’t listened to the album, “Bloody Valentine” sounds like somebody who studied all the most popular pop punk artists from the 90’s and 2000’s and aced the class.  I am curious if the intersection of hip hop and pop punk is elevated after this album.

 

Super One:  The 1^st Album, SuperM (#2)

It has become clear in the last few years that K-Pop music is on the rise.  Artists such as BTS and Blackpink have had success on both the Hot 100 and Billboard 200 charts, but SuperM is different:  they have never had a song chart in the Hot 100.  Their previous EP hit number 1 on the Billboard 200, so it’s safe to assume this release is not a fluke.  I plan to discuss this in an upcoming episode of Groupie and Harmony in more depth, but I think this album charting where it did signals that we have entered a massive section of the Korean Wave where K-Pop is more successful than ever in the U.S.

 

Nectar, Joji (#3)

Joji, George Miller’s (not to be mixed up with the Mad Max director or the retired politician) musical stage name, seemed to come out of nowhere upon releasing Ballads 1 in 2018.  However, this is not Miller’s first rodeo in entertainment; he rose to fame as a YouTuber through his channels DizastaMusic, TVFilthyFrank, and TooDamnFilthy.  He also complemented the second channel with a comedic hip hop project under the name Pink Guy.  He retired each of these projects to focus on Joji starting in 2017 and it has worked:  each of his first two albums hit number 3 in the U.S. and were positively received by critics.  There are other internet personalities that have tried to break into the music industry with mixed results.  With the popularity of TikTok, I could see others trying to follow Joji’s suit, but I believe Joji might be among those who have set the gold standard for this route.

 

Ohms, Deftones (#5)

Deftones newest album managed to be their 6^th top 10 album and 4^th top 5 album.  I expected it to hit top 10, but given the competition this week, I wasn’t sure where it would peak.  I don’t find it at all weird that this album charted as high as it did, but it make me laugh sometimes that Deftones has the following that they do.  They’ve always reminded me of Tool in the way that both their styles are strange, but they each have massive followings.

 

My Gift, Carrie Underwood (#8)

I was not surprised to see an album by Carrie Underwood debut in the top 10 considering her popularity.  What I was surprised by was that a Christmas album was released in September.  Often, we start seeing Christmas albums in late October and early November (for the sake of getting into the season early and gifts), but Underwood announced it in July and then released it in September.  She also happened to choose a week that turned out to be an incredibly competitive week.  Despite all that, I figure releasing the first major Christmas album in a year where people feel like they need some sort of escape was the right strategy from a marketing standpoint.  I’m torn on whether it is a trend we will see going forward; on one hand, there’s part of the population that says it’s too early, but on the other hand, there is an audience during Hallmark’s Christmas in July.

 

Daystar, Tory Lanez (#10)

Those who reviewed this album often were critical of it, but many reviewers didn’t even review it due to the recency of when he shot Megan Thee Stallion.  In particular, several people were critical of both the way he discredited Megan’s claims and how he released this last-minute album just two days after the verdict in the Breonna Taylor case.  While there were several other artists that released albums on the same day, most wouldn’t have the flexibility with their record label to change the date of this.  Lanez released Daystar on his own label so this wouldn’t be an issue.  Additionally, most of the release dates of these albums were already set for several months, but Lanez discredited the allegations on several occasions in the album, suggesting the album could not have been completed before July 15^th (the date where he shot Megan) and likely was written/recorded after Megan first admitted who shot her in August.  In short, it generated controversy since many regarded it tasteless and ignorant.  It still debuted in the top 10; I think a big part of that is due to the negative press Lanez got.  There is an ideology that there is no such thing as bad press.  However, this album was his lowest charting album in every country, suggesting the shooting probably played a role in the numbers.

 

No Stranger, Natalie Grant (#13)

Contemporary Christian musician Natalie Grant had an interesting case of a release this year.  The first single from the album peaked at 25 on the U.S. Christian Charts, becoming her lowest charting song since 2014.  Her second single peaked at 31, becoming her lowest charting song since 2010.  Her two other singles to date from the album have yet to chart, becoming her first singles to not chart on the Christian charts since 2003 (her single released that year did peak at 25 on the Adult Contemporary charts however).  That said, her album became her best debut and highest charting album.  I think a large part of that stems from it being her first album in five years, her longest gap between two albums.

 

Hellboy, Lil Peep (#52)

This mixtape was originally released in 2016 and charted at 52 upon its streaming rerelease.  There have been several hip hop musicians who have died in the past few years, including Mac Miller, Juice Wrld, Nipsy Hussle, XXXTentacion, and Pop Smoke.  Each of these artists have had success since passing and several have found more success after death.  While Lil Peep had started to achieve commercial success before he died, he has achieved greater commercial success since.  This is not a new trend; historically, many musicians who die at a young age are often held in higher regard than they were during their lifetime.  Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain (Nirvana), Scott Weiland (Stone Temple Pilots), Chris Cornell (Soundgarden), Chester Bennington (Linkin Park), Amy Winehouse, and Ian Curtis (Joy Division) are all examples of artists whose legacy grew substantially after they passed.  I am not surprised to see the same start to happen with Lil Peep considering his influence in emo rap.

 

Ultra Mono, Idles (#54)

I discussed Idles in the Rising Artists series I did in my podcast, Groupie and Harmony.  They were an act I considered to be on the rise; I felt like this album was set to be their U.S. chart debut.  I can’t remember how I predicted this album would chart in the podcast, but I became skeptical when I saw the competition it was against and wasn’t sure if it would chart in the top 150.  It wound up charting much better than I expected; it also was a massive hit in Europe, debuting at number 1 in their native U.K.  I saw a decent amount of promotion for the album on music sites and social media, so it makes sense that it might perform better than I initially expected.  They do perform a genre that often doesn’t rely on the success of singles (punk/post-punk) so that makes it a little more difficult to predict as well.

 

Floor Seats II, A$AP Ferg (#143)

This is a strange situation:  an artist who previously had successful albums that weren’t riding the success of a hit single releases a mixtape that doesn’t chart well compared to his previous releases despite a hit song.  While his mixtapes have never charted as well as his albums, even his previous mixtape peaked at 12 and his 2019 EP peaked at 50.  Ferg’s single “Move Your Hips” (featuring Nicki Minaj and MadeinTYO) peaked at 19 in the Hot 100 and is his first top 20 song.  My best guess as for what happened deals with the claims that he was removed from the A$AP Mob collective.  A$AP Illz previously said that Ferg was no longer in the collective, which A$AP Nast rejected (A$PA Mob also retweeted Nast’s claim) all within a month of the release.  Despite that, Illz called Ferg’s newest music “dumb trash” in the same post; I wonder if that played enough of a role in this.

 

The Ascension, Sufjan Stevens (#153)

It might be concerning on first glimpse to see Sufjan Steven’s newest album only debut at 153 given that his previous two solo albums (Age of Adz and Carrie & Lowell) both peaked in the top 10 (#7 and #10 respectively).  It also doesn’t help that each album had a 5-year gap between them.  However, this was probably the result of some logistical issues that caused delays.  While the album was scheduled to be released on September 25^th, the physical release of the album was postponed a week until October 2^nd “due to COVID-19 related manufacturing and logistics delays”.  The digital version was still released on September 25^th.  Changing the physical release date meant any preorders of the physical release version would not be counted until the week starting with October 2^nd.  However, keeping the digital release date the same meant any digital purchases or streaming numbers would still count for the week of the original release.  Most of Steven’s sales come from physical releases, so this put him at a disadvantage for this chart.  The following week, the album reached 90.  While this is still substantially lower than his two aforementioned releases, it also combines the first week of physical releases with the second week of digital releases (week 2 tends to be worse).  I expect this album would have peaked in the top 40 (possibly top 30) had it not been for the delays.  There is some precedent here:  Bon Iver had two albums that peaked at 2 in Bon Iver and 22, A Million, but released the physical release of I, I three weeks after the digital release and it only peaked at 26.