Lil Child and his workforce pulled out all of the stops to verify the artist’s WHAM rap would make it to the sting of heaven on this week’s Billboard charts.
Astrida Valigorsky/WireImage
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Astrida Valigorsky/WireImage
Early January is normally a sluggish stretch with regards to the Billboard charts, however 2025 is giving us a twist, with a number of stars making huge strikes. Lil Child and Dangerous Bunny debut within the high two spots on the Billboard 200, whereas Morgan Wallen experiences an enormous surge within the Scorching 100. However that wasn’t sufficient to knock down Girl Gaga and Bruno Mars‘ “Die With a Smile,” which sits atop the singles chart for a second straight week.
TOP ALBUMS
Final week’s Billboard 200 supplied a transparent image of the established order in the beginning of 2025: With the vacations an already-distant reminiscence, the chart documented large weeks for SZA‘s SOS Deluxe: LANA (No. 1) and Kendrick Lamar‘s GNX (No. 2), adopted by a high 10 filled with common suspects like Sabrina Carpenter, Billie Eilish, Morgan Wallen and the Depraved soundtrack.
This week, we get a recent jolt of vitality, as SZA and Lamar make means for 2 blockbuster debuts. Lil Child enters the chart at No. 1 with WHAM — an acronym for “Who Laborious As Me,” not a tribute to the duo who spent final Christmas within the high 5 — which turns into the rapper’s fourth consecutive chart-topper and seventh album to hit the highest 10.
Lil Child and his workforce pulled out all of the stops to verify the artist’s WHAM rap would make it to the sting of heaven on this week’s Billboard charts. The guest-packed album got here out on the primary Friday in January — historically a sluggish spot with regards to new music — then acquired additional juice from an prolonged version simply 4 days later. That model added 4 new songs, as a part of a set that would, at the very least at first, solely be bought through Lil Child’s webstore.
These machinations have been mandatory, as a result of on the primary Sunday in January — an uncommon launch date if ever there was one — one other chart-topping celebrity exercised his freedom to launch an album. Dangerous Bunny’s DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS out-performed WHAM on streaming providers, even with two fewer days’ value of streams, however could not match Lil Child’s first-week gross sales numbers — particularly given the discharge of extra tracks a number of days into WHAM‘s existence.
With WHAM (the week’s high vendor) at No. 1 and DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS (the week’s high streamer) at No. 2, SZA cannot have all the things she desires, so SOS drops from No. 1 to No. 3. The subsequent 4 data additionally slide two spots down: Lamar’s GNX, Carpenter’s Quick n’ Candy, the Depraved soundtrack and Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Laborious and Smooth. Morgan Wallen’s One Factor at a Time, Gracie Abrams‘ The Secret of Us and Tyler, The Creator‘s CHROMAKOPIA all maintain regular at No. 8, No. 9 and No. 10, respectively.
TOP SONGS
Final 12 months, Shaboozey‘s “A Bar Tune (Tipsy)” posted a record-tying 19 nonconsecutive weeks at No. 1. For a bunch of these weeks, No. 2 belonged to Girl Gaga and Bruno Mars’ “Die With a Smile,” which lastly claimed the chart’s high spot final week — its twentieth week on the Billboard Scorching 100.
Now, for a second week in a row, the 2 songs’ 2024 roles have been reversed, as “Die With a Smile” sits atop the chart and Shaboozey stays perched on the skin wanting in at No. 2. Billie Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather” is equally baked in, as that sturdy hit sits at No. 3 as soon as once more.
Then we lastly get a giant mover, as Morgan Wallen’s new single “Smile” leaps from No. 27 (the place it debuted final week) all the way in which to No. 4. As with Dangerous Bunny on the albums chart, “Smile” got here out part-way by means of final week’s window of eligibility; it dropped Dec. 31, whereas the chart lined the interval stretching from Dec. 27 to Jan. 2. So now it will get a full week to indicate its stuff, which was greater than sufficient to make it the twelfth top-10 hit of Wallen’s profession.
Wallen really has two songs on this week’s high 10 — “I Had Some Assist,” the Put up Malone hit by which he options, dips from No. 8 to No. 9 — however he isn’t the one star who could make that declare. Along with showing in “Die With a Smile,” Bruno Mars holds at No. 5 with “APT.,” his duet with BLACKPINK‘s ROSÉ.
That leaves 4 different holdovers within the high 10. Teddy Swims‘ everlasting hit “Lose Management” — which got here out in the summertime of 2023 earlier than being named Billboard‘s largest music of 2024 — dips from No. 4 to No. 6. Kendrick Lamar’s “Luther (feat. SZA)” holds at No. 7, Gracie Abrams’ “That is So True” drops from No. 6 to No. 8, and Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” hangs in there for an additional week, however slips from No. 9 to No. 10.
WORTH NOTING
In search of one other knowledge level for instance how radically streaming has reshaped customers’ music-listening habits? Let’s examine this week’s Billboard 200 — a pleasant, quiet January week with out vacation titles or a ton of brand-new releases — to the Billboard 200 from the identical week in 2024.
Care to guess how most of the titles overlap?
That’s to say, how most of the nation’s 200 hottest albums proper now have been additionally among the many nation’s 200 hottest albums one calendar 12 months in the past? Anybody who’s scanned the Billboard 200 in recent times can sense that there’d be a good bit of overlap, given the dimensions of Taylor Swift‘s catalog and the sheer variety of greatest-hits collections by family names like Queen, Fleetwood Mac and Creedence Clearwater Revival.
However would you have got guessed that 124 of the highest 200 albums are on the very same chart — a chart that is presupposed to mirror the ever-shifting tastes of the popular-music viewers — a complete 12 months aside?
A few of the similarities are downright eerie. Journey‘s Best Hits is at the moment No. 97; it was No. 99 final 12 months. Lil Wayne‘s Tha Carter III was No. 180 final 12 months; it now sits at No. 175. Best Hits by 2Pac has been on the Billboard 200 for a complete of 556 weeks, and within the final 12 months, its chart motion has taken it from No. 103 to… No. 103.
It is tempting to counsel that Billboard think about altering its chart formulation — and to notice that Billboard has, behind its paywall, extra granular charts with details about who’s effervescent up from the underground, attracting essentially the most radio airplay or blowing up on TikTok. However the true situation right here is with streaming algorithms — and, on a bigger scale, with synthetic intelligence typically.
The aim of a streaming algorithm is to ingest your preferences — artists you’ve got favored, music you’ve got loved, genres that curiosity you — and tailor a playlist to swimsuit these tendencies. However that naturally, by design, creates a doom loop by which you retain re-ingesting the identical stuff; your tastes aren’t given a lot of an opportunity to develop or evolve.
After they’re working proper, and when listeners need them to carry out proper, algorithms can nonetheless facilitate exploration and discovery; they will take a single music search and feed you comparable materials that introduces you to different songs and artists you would possibly like. However the Billboard charts are demonstrating how not often that is taking place on a grand scale. Scanning at the moment’s pop charts, with their 62% stasis year-over-year, is a bit like glancing over your native film listings and seeing that each theater continues to be displaying Smokey and the Bandit.
As AI will get extra highly effective and ever-present, it is exhausting to not worry a worsening of this pop-cultural calcification. As soon as all the things we have already consumed has been capped and cauterized, we’re left solely to remix and recycle what we already know on the expense of new artwork, new concepts, new types of expression and methods of wanting on the world. How are we presupposed to evolve, as soon as we have restricted ourselves to what’s already been expressed?
Anyway, should you’re feeling the identical means — such as you’re subsisting on digested stays on the tail-end of a musical Human Centipede — at the very least now you’ve got acquired yet another knowledge level to again that up. That is enjoyable, proper?
