For the first time since 2000, a newly released album has failed to appear in the Billboard Top 10 for three consecutive weeks.
Per Billboard, Foo Fighters’ Medicine at Midnight and Pooh Shiesty’s Sheisty Season were the most recent albums to have cracked the Top 10 upon their first week of release — back on February 20th.
In the three weeks since then, the charts have been dominated by older releases, including Morgan Wallen’s Dangerous: The Dangerous Album, which has now spent eight straight weeks at No. 1, as well as Ariana Grande’s Positions, Pop Smoke’s Shoot For the Stars Aim for the Moon, Lil Durk’s The Voice, The Weeknd’s After Hours, and Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia. Many of these releases — such as Grande’s Positions, Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia, and BTS’s BE — have been fueled by recently released deluxe editions, while The Weeknd’s chart success was no doubt aided by his recent Super Bowl Halftime performance.
All the while, new releases from Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, Alice Cooper, SG Lewis, Kevin Gates, Slowthai, Pentatonix, and the much-hyped soundtrack to Judas and the Black Messiah all failed to reach the Top 10.
Not counting the post-Christmas season, when there is often a dearth of new releases, the last time the Billboard 200 went without a top 10 debut for three straight weeks was back in 2000. That drought was broken with the release of Snoop Dogg’s Tha Last Meal on December 19th, 2000.
As last week brought new releases from Kings of Leon and Drake, it’s likely Billboard’s latest drought will also end at three weeks — but we won’t know for sure until next Monday.
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