The rate at which Taylor Swift has been at the top of the Billboard 200 has been chopped down to 75 percent this week as Meghan Trainor takes the crown with Title. The album moved 238,000 equivalent albums, marking the highest debut for any solo performer since Susan Boyle during 2009. The "All About That Bass" vocalist joins One Direction and J. Cole as the only performers to interrupt Swift since 1989 came out 12 weeks ago. We'll see what happens next week with regard to that streak.
That means of course that Swift and 1989 slip to no. 2 with 131,000 equivalent album sales, with act album sales dropping below 100,000 for the first time.
Kidz Bop 27 marks the next new album to debut in the Billboard 200 this week (relax...there were only three total). It starts at no. 3 with 80,000 equivalent sales (77,000 of which were legitimate album sales). That's the highest sales rate for a Kidz Bop title since Kidz Bop 23 during 2013. Appropriately, both Swift and Trainor are featured on the new set.
Ed Sheeran and x stuck around at no. 4, moving 77,000 equivalent copies, but Mark Ronson and Uptown Special were right on his heels, taking no. 5 with 77,000 eq. copies moved as well (tiebreakers are decided by total album sales...in this case, Sheeran nudged Ronson by about 6,000). Ronson of course has been riding high for a while based on the hit "Uptown Funk."
Nicki Minaj took another fall due to the new debuts, as The Pinkprint settled at no. 6 with 54,000 in equivalent sales. That's enough to keep her ahead of Sam Smith, who's spending his 31st week with In The Lonely Hour at no.7 with 50,000 metric sales, helped a huge amount by streaming and single download numbers.
Maroon 5 was the week's biggest winner, jumping from no. 15 to no. 8 thanks to a huge boost in albums sales, downloads and streams. The cause: The music video for "Sugar," which featured the band crashing supposedly real weddings, went viral and elevated all of the band's numbers. V moved 48,000 equivalent albums as a result.
Two familiar names round out the Top 10 this week: Hozier takes no. 9 with 42,000 metric sales while J. Cole settles at no. 10 with 38,000 during Forest Hills Drive's seventh week on the charts.
