Metallica’s 72 Seasons opens at No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart (dated April 29) with the largest sales week in over three-and-a-half years for any rock or hard rock album. The set bows with 134,000 copies sold in the United States in the week ending April 20, according to Luminate. It’s the eighth No. 1 on Top Album Sales for the band.
72 Seasons marks the group’s first original album in nearly seven years, since 2016’s chart-topping Hardwired… To Self-Destruct.
Also on Top Album Sales, Waterparks notches its highest charting set and best sales week ever – as Intellectual Property bows at No. 2. Plus, Yung Bleu and Prof both log their first top 10s with the arrivals of Love Scars II and Horse, respectively.
Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart ranks the top-selling albums of the week based only on traditional album sales. The chart’s history dates back to May 25, 1991, the first week Billboard began tabulating charts with electronically monitored piece count information from SoundScan, now Luminate. Pure album sales were the sole measurement utilized by the Billboard 200 albums chart through the list dated Dec. 6, 2014, after which that chart switched to a methodology that blends album sales with track equivalent album units and streaming equivalent album units. For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both Twitter and Instagram.
72 Seasons bows with the biggest sales week for any rock or hard rock album since Fear Inoculum’s debut with 248,000 sold (No. 1, chart dated Sept. 14, 2019).
Of 72 Seasons’ 134,000 sold, physical sales comprise 106,500 (59,000 on CD, 42,500 on vinyl and 5,000 on cassette) and digital download sales comprise nearly 27,500. The vinyl sales sum marks Metallica’s largest sales week for an album on the format since Luminate began tracking sales in 1991.
Waterparks collects its highest-charting set and best sales week yet as Intellectual Property debuts at No. 2 with 16,000 copies sold. It’s the third top 10 for the rock act. Melanie Martinez’s former No. 1 Portals falls 2-3 with 13,000 sold (down 33%), Taylor Swift’s chart-topping Midnights climbs 5-4 with nearly 13,000 (down 6%) and Morgan Wallen’s former leader One Thing at a Time vaults 15-5 with 12,000 (up 102%) after a new vinyl edition of the album was released.
Yung Bleu bows at No. 6 with Love Scars II, scoring his first top 10 and best sales week yet, as the album starts with 10,000 sold. Lana Del Rey’s Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd. falls 4-7 with 9,000 sold (down 35%). Rapper Prof achieves his first top 10 and best sales week with the No. 8 start of Horse (9,000 sold). TWICE’s former No. 1 Ready to Be dips 8-9 with nearly 9,000 (down 18%) and TOMORROW X TOGETHER’s chart-topping The Name Chapter: Temptation slips 9-10 with nearly 8,000 (down 14%).
In the week ending April 20, there were 2.023 million albums sold in the U.S. (up 0.4% compared to the previous week). Of that sum, physical albums (CDs, vinyl LPs, cassettes, etc.) comprised 1.675 million (up 0.4%) and digital albums comprised 348,000 (up 0.4%).
There were 693,000 CD albums sold in the week ending April 20 (up 0.3% week-over-week) and 965,000 vinyl albums sold (up 0.4%). Year-to-date CD album sales stand at 10.464 million (up 3.8% compared to the same time frame a year ago) and year-to-date vinyl album sales total 14.487 million (up 27.7%).
Overall year-to-date album sales total 30.786 million (up 9.7% compared to the same year-to-date time frame a year ago). Year-to-date physical album sales stand at 25.116 million (up 16.4%) and digital album sales total 5.670 million (down 12.6%).