Justin Bieber Earns Seventh No. 1 Album on Billboard 200 Chart with ‘Changes’

Plus: A Boogie Wit da Hoodie, Tame Impala and Monsta X debut in top 10.

Justin Bieber scores his seventh No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart as Changes debuts atop the tally. The set, which was released on Feb. 14 via SchoolBoy/Raymond Braun/Def Jam Recordings, earned 231,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in the week ending Feb. 20, according to Nielsen Music/MRC Data.

Bieber leads a busy top 10, where A Boogie Wit da Hoodie, Tame Impala and Monsta X also arrive with their latest efforts.

The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption as measured in equivalent album units. Units comprise album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). The new Feb. 29-dated chart, where Changes enters at No. 1, will be posted in full on Billboard‘s website on Feb. 25.

Changes’ 231,000 first-week units represent the third-largest week of 2020 for an album, behind the debut frames of Eminem’s Music to Be Murdered By (279,000; chart dated Feb. 1) and Halsey’s Manic (239,000; also Feb. 1).

Changes is Bieber’s first album in more than four years, since Purpose debuted at No. on the Dec. 5, 2015-dated chart with 649,000 units (with 522,000 of that sum in album sales).

Of Changes’ first-week sum, 126,000 are in album sales, 101,000 are in SEA units (equating to 135 million on-demand streams of the songs on the album) and 4,000 are in TEA units. The album’s sales were bolstered by a concert ticket/album sale redemption offer with Bieber’s upcoming tour, and many merchandise/album bundle offers sold via Bieber’s official webstore.

Notably, at 25, Bieber is the youngest solo artist to achieve seven No. 1 albums. (He turns 26 on March 1.) Previously, the youngest soloist to land seven No. 1s was Elvis Presley, who logged his seventh leader (of 10 total) when he was 26 years and 11 months old (with Blue Hawaii on Dec. 11, 1961).

If one included groups in our calculation, all four members of The Beatles were younger than Bieber on the occasion of the band’s seventh No. 1. The Fab Four achieved their seventh leader (of a record 19) with Rubber Soul on Jan. 8, 1966. At the time, the oldest member of the group was Ringo Starr, who was only 25 years and six months old, while the youngest member, George Harrison, was just 22 years and 10 months old.

Changes marks not only Bieber’s seventh No. 1, but his ninth top 10 effort — the entirety of his charting albums. Here’s a look at all nine of his albums on the Billboard 200: Changes (No. 1), Purpose (No. 1; Dec. 5, 2015), Believe: Acoustic (No. 1; Feb. 16, 2013), Believe (No. 1; July 7, 2012), Under the Mistletoe (No. 1; Nov. 19, 2011), Never Say Never: The Remixes EP (No. 1; March 5, 2011), My Worlds Acoustic (No. 7; Dec. 11, 2010), My World 2.0 (No. 1 for four weeks; April 10, 2010) and My World EP (No. 5; April 10, 2010).

At No. 2 on the new Billboard 200, A Boogie Wit da Hoodie’s Artist 2.0 debuts with 111,000 equivalent album units — nearly all from streaming activity. Of the set’s starting sum, 106,000 are in SEA units (equaling 149 million in on-demand streams of songs from the album), making it the No. 1 most-streamed album of the week. The remainder of the album’s units were driven by album sales (3,000) and TEA units (1,000). Artist 2.0 is A Boogie Wit da Hoodie’s sixth charting album and third top 10 effort, following Hoodie SZN (No. 1 on Jan. 19, 2019) and The Bigger Artist (No. 4 on Oct. 21, 2017). Of note, the rapper’s last album, Hoodie SZN, also debuted at No. 2 (on Jan. 5, 2019), but waited until Jan. 19 to ascend to No. 1.

Tame Impala achieves its highest charting album ever on the Billboard 200, as The Slow Rush bows at No. 3 with 110,000 equivalent album units (with 80,000 of that in album sales). The act previously topped out at No. 4 in 2015 with Currents. Further, The Slow Rush logs Tame Impala its best sales week for an album, trumping the 45,000 first-week sales of Currents. (The Slow Rush’s sales were goosed by a concert ticket/album sale redemption offer with the act’s upcoming tour, as well as a handful of merchandise/album sale bundles sold via its webstore.)

The Slow Rush was also a hot seller on vinyl LP, as 32% of the album’s first-week sales were generated by its vinyl configuration. The set sold just under 26,000 vinyl copies — the seventh-biggest sales week for a vinyl album since Nielsen Music/MRC Data began tracking music data in 1991. (The largest week for a vinyl album in the Nielsen era was logged by the debut week of Jack White’s Lazaretto in 2014, with 40,000 sold.)

Roddy Ricch​’s Please Excuse Me for Being Antisocial falls from No. 1 to No. 4 on the new Billboard 200 chart with 70,000 equivalent album units earned (down 11%). The set has logged four total weeks on top.

Monsta X rounds out the new arrivals in the top 10, as the six-member South Korean vocal group makes its Billboard 200 chart debut at No. 5 with its first all-English-language album, All About Luv. The set launches with 52,000 equivalent album units earned, with 50,000 of that sum comprising album sales. All About Luv is Monsta X’s first album for Epic Records since signing with the label in 2019.

All About Luv‘s first week was bolstered by sales generated from a concert ticket/album sale redemption offer, a bevy of merchandise/album bundles, in-store appearances during street week, and more than a dozen different variants of the album available for fans to purchase (such as multiple CD editions, each with a different cover for one of the group’s members).

While All About Luv is Monsta X’s first Billboard 200 entry, the act has charted on other Billboard tallies since 2015 following its formation on a TV competition show in its home country that same year. Among those charting efforts were nine top 10s on the World Albums chart between 2016 and 2019 (all released via Starship Entertainment). The World Albums chart ranks the week’s most popular albums in the U.S. that are, generally speaking, titles that contain native music or native-language music from countries outside the U.S.

Back on the new Billboard 200, Post Malone’s former No. 1 Hollywood’s Bleeding descends from No. 2 to No. 6 with 50,000 equivalent album units earned (down 4%), while Billie Eilish​’s former leader When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? dips from No. 5 to No. 7 with 44,000 units (down 4%).

Pop Smoke’s Meet the Woo, V.2 is pushed down one spot to No. 8, though with an 11% increase in units (to 40,000) in its second week on the list. The album gains in the wake of fan reaction to the rapper’s death on Feb. 19.

Rounding out the new top 10 are Eminem’s former chart-topper Music to Be Murdered By, slipping from No. 3 to No. 9 with 39,000 equivalent album units earned (down 23%), and Halsey’s Manic, falling from No. 8 to No. 10 with 31,000 units (down 9%).

Source: billboard.com