The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption as measured in equivalent album units. Units comprise album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Each unit equals one album sale, or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an album. All of the Oct. 16, 2021-dated charts will be posted in full on Billboard‘s website on Oct. 12. For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both Twitter and Instagram.
Love for Sale starts with 41,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in the week ending Oct. 7, according to MRC Data. Of that sum, album sales comprise 38,000; SEA units comprise 3,000 (equaling 3.85 million on-demand streams of the set’s songs) and TEA units comprise a negligible number.
Love for Sale marks Bennett’s sixth top 10 album on the Billboard 200 and Lady Gaga’s 10th top 10.
Bennett achieved his first top 10 album in 1962 with I Left My Heart in San Francisco. It climbed from No. 11 to No. 7 on Monoaural LP’s chart dated Oct. 6, 1962. (At the time, there were two main album charts, a Monoaural LP’s chart, and a Stereo LP’s chart. The Billboard 200 began as a regularly published weekly chart in 1956, though it wouldn’t become known by its current name, the Billboard 200, until 1992.)
Gaga’s first top 10 came on the March 7, 2009-dated Billboard 200, when The Fame rose 26-10.
With Love for Sale’s top 10 arrival, Bennett has a 59-year span of top 10 albums on the Billboard 200 – the longest span of top 10s for a living artist.
Only Nat “King” Cole, who died in 1965, has a greater span of top 10s among all acts: a 63-year and eight-month span between his first top 10, Love Is the Thing, in April of 1957 and his most recent top 10, The Christmas Song, in January of 2021.
The 95-year-old Bennett made his Billboard 200 debut with the simply-titled Tony on Feb. 23, 1957 (when the chart was known as Best Selling Pop Albums).
Love for Sale also debuts at No. 1 on both Billboard’s Traditional Jazz Albums and overall Jazz Albums charts. On the former, its Bennett’s 15th No. 1, breaking him out of a tie with Harry Connick, Jr. for the most No. 1s in the 54-year history of the chart. (The list began in 1967.) The Traditional Jazz Albums chart ranks the most popular traditional jazz albums of the week, by equivalent album units.
On the overall Jazz Albums chart, which started in 1993, Love for Sale is Bennett’s 10th leader, tying him with Connick, Jr. for the third-most No. 1s. (Kenny G has the most No. 1s on Jazz Albums, with 12, followed by Diana Krall, with 11.) The Jazz Albums tally ranks the most popular jazz albums of the week, by equivalent album units, across all flavors of jazz – including both traditional and contemporary jazz titles.
