News March 9, 2021

A new album hasn’t entered the Billboard Top 10 in three weeks

Apparently it’s been a hot minute since a new album entered the Billboard Top 10 charts.

In fact, it’s been a whole three weeks. This news comes in as particularly noteworthy, considering the last time a new album hadn’t cracked the Top 10 in three weeks was back at the turn of the millennium, in the year 2000.

As per Consequence of Sound, that drought was broken by Snoop Dogg’s Tha Last Meal, which he released on December 19th, 2000.

According to Billboard, the most recent new albums to launch into the chart’s Top 10 tier were Foo Fighters’ Medicine at Midnight and Pooh Shiesty’s Sheisty Season.

And that was back on February 20th.

In the last three weeks, the charts have been dominated by older releases, as reported by Consequence of Sound. Those include Morgan Wallen’s Dangerous: The Dangerous Album, Pop Smoke’s Shoot For the Stars Aim for the Moon and Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia, just to name a few. Many of the releases that fall under this category have also been boosted by deluxe editions, or in the case of The Weeknd, his Super Bowl Halftime performance.

In the case of Morgan Wallen, according to MRC Data, Wallen’s Dangerous earned 82,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in the week ending March 4th. Now, Dangerous is one of only six country records to have spent eight weeks in total at No. 1. All despite being canned by his record label as well as pulled from various playlists.

Dangerous also now ties with Taylor Swift’s Folklore, with each album holding eight weeks at the number one spot.

This year however, recent new releases including the likes of albums from SG Lewis, Slowthai, Nick Cave, as well as the soundtrack to Judas and the Black Messiah have all been unsuccessful in cracking the Top 10 echelon.

What will the rest of the year hold for new music releases?