News October 2, 2017

The Killers just scored their first ever #1 album in the U.S.

It’s taken them five albums and over a decade, but The Killers have finally hit the very top of the U.S. charts, knocking the Foo Fighters off the top and holding Macklemore’s new record at bay with their new album Wonderful Wonderful.

As Billboard reports, the album has reached the pinnacle 13 years after their debut LP Hot Fuss first cracked the Billboard 200 chart, peaking at #7. Since then, they’ve managed to hit #2 with their sophomore album Sam’s Town, while all five of their albums have hit #1 in the U.K.

On the Australian front, Wonderful Wonderful is also the first record to send The Killers to the top of the ARIA chart since their debut, although they’ve chalked up top-five finishes with every album.

The record has sold 118,000 equivalent album units in the week ending Sep 28, with 111,000 of those traditional album sales, and as Billboard notes, the record was helped by a redemption offer redeemed by ticketholders for the band’s 2018 tour – a similar move to the one that has helped some of the year’s other rock chart-toppers like Arcade Fire’s Everything Now and LCD Soundsystem’s Amercian Dream also post big numbers, along with other number ones by a range of artists.

Now the second rock band to hit the top of the charts in as many weeks, The Killers join the aforementioned Foo Fighters, LCD Soundsystem and Arcade Fire as one of only six rock acts to reach the summit this year, alongside Brand New with Science Fiction and Linkin Park with One More Light. In comparison, 10 rock bands released #1 albums in 2016.

The Killers also now sit alongside LCD Soundsystem as a band who took over a decade from the release of their debut album to score their first number one, and managed it in 12 years as opposed to The Killers’ 13 – although we’re sure Brandon Flowers & Co. aren’t complaining.

One man who may be a bit miffed is rapper Macklemore, whose sophomore solo album Gemini debuted at #2 this week, while also highlighting a sharp disparity in the #1 and #2 spots, managing only 51,000 equivalent albums sold – well under half of The Killers’ 118,000.

Notably, while the vast majority of The Killers’ album sales were traditional copies, only 27,000 of Macklemore’s were actual albums sold, with the remainder made up of album streams (‘streamed equivalent albums’), or even just a high enough volume of streams of individual tracks (‘track equivalent albums’).

While The Killers and Macklemore both battled for headlines as they played the AFL and NRL grand finals respectively, we guess this week Brandon Flowers can call himself ‘The Man’ as much as he likes, and nobody can really argue.