{"id":4793,"date":"2026-02-01T21:06:58","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T21:06:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musicnow.iprorecords.com\/?p=4793"},"modified":"2026-02-01T21:06:59","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T21:06:59","slug":"megadeth-earns-first-no-1-album-on-billboard-200","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musicnow.iprorecords.com\/?p=4793","title":{"rendered":"Megadeth Earns First No. 1 Album on Billboard\u00a0200"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<script>\r\nif( document.getElementById( \"builder-styles-css\" ) ) document.getElementById( \"builder-styles-css\" ).insertAdjacentHTML( \"beforebegin\", \"<link rel='stylesheet' href='https:\/\/musicnow.iprorecords.com\/wp-content\/themes\/themify-music\/themify\/themify-builder\/css\/themify-builder-style.css' type='text\/css' \/>\" );\r\n<\/script>\r\n\t\t\t\n<p>The self-titled set marks the metal band&#8217;s final planned studio album.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After a nearly 40-year wait,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/artist\/https:\/www.billboard.com\/artist\/megadeth\">Megadeth<\/a>\u00a0achieves its first No. 1 album on the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/charts\/billboard-200\/\">Billboard 200<\/a>\u00a0chart. The metal band\u2019s new self-titled set, which also marks its expected\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/music\/rock\/megadeth-last-album-farewell-tour-vic-rattlehead-video-1236044456\/\">final<\/a>\u00a0studio album, debuts atop the list dated Feb. 7. Megadeth made its\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/t\/billboard-200\/\">Billboard 200<\/a>\u00a0chart debut in 1986 and has placed 23 albums on the ranking through its career. Until this week, the band had gone as high as No. 2, with 1992\u2019s\u00a0<em>Countdown to Extinction<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The new self-titled album earned 73,000 equivalent album units in the United States in the week ending Jan. 29, according to Luminate \u2014 marking the act\u2019s best week, by units earned, since the chart began ranking by units in December 2014. The bulk of that sum was driven by pure album sales (purchases of physical and digital copies of the album), totaling 69,000. That\u2019s the biggest sales week for any Megadeth album since 1999, when\u00a0<em>Risk<\/em>\u00a0opened with 74,000 sold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The new album was released on Jan. 23, a day after the documentary&nbsp;<em>Megadeth: Behind the Mask<\/em>&nbsp;was released in movie theaters. The band\u2019s farewell tour kicks off on Feb. 15 in Victoria, British Columbia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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, compiled by Luminate. Units comprise album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Each unit equals one album sale, or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 2,500 ad-supported or 1,000 paid\/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an album. The new Feb. 7, 2026-dated chart will be posted in full on&nbsp;<em>Billboard<\/em>\u2018s website on Feb. 3. For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both X and Instagram.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Of&nbsp;<em>Megadeth<\/em>\u2019s 73,000 equivalent album units earned in the latest tracking week, album sales comprise 69,000 (it debuts at No. 1 on Top Album Sales), SEA units comprise 4,000 (equaling 4.23 million on-demand official streams of the set\u2019s tracks) and TEA units comprise a negligible sum. Sales of the album got a boost from its availability across more than a dozen vinyl variants, a Target-exclusive CD with a bonus track, and the mid-week release of deluxe digital download version of the album with another bonus track.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Of the album\u2019s 69,000 sales, physical purchases of CD, vinyl and cassette tapes totaled 56,000, with 22,000 of that sum on vinyl. That marks Megadeth\u2019s best week on vinyl in the modern era (since Luminate began electronically tracking sales in 1991).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Megadeth\u2019s debut of 73,000 units marks the lowest sum at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 since last May, when SZA\u2019s&nbsp;<em>SOS<\/em>&nbsp;returned to No. 1 on the May 3-dated chart with 52,000 units.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Megadeth made its Billboard 200 chart debut on the Oct. 25, 1986-dated list with&nbsp;<em>Peace Sells\u2026 But Who\u2019s Buying?<\/em>, at No. 118. It would later peak at No. 76. The band scored its first top 40 set with its next entry, 1988\u2019s No. 28-peaking&nbsp;<em>So Far, So Good\u2026 So What!<\/em>&nbsp;In 1992, the band landed its first top 10 with the No. 2-peaking&nbsp;<em>Countdown to Extinction<\/em>&nbsp;\u2014 the first of nine top 10s for the act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dating to Megadeth\u2019s debut on the Billboard 200, the band\u2019s 39-year, three-month and one-week wait for its first No. 1 is the longest any act has waited for a first No. 1 since 2016. That January, David Bowie hit No. 1 for the first time with&nbsp;<em>Blackstar<\/em>&nbsp;(released two days before he died).&nbsp;<em>Blackstar<\/em>&nbsp;debuted at No. 1 on the Jan. 30-dated chart, nearly 43 years and 10 months after Bowie charted his first album in April 1972 with&nbsp;<em>Hunky Dory<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Before Bowie, the last longer wait for a first No. 1 was when James Taylor hit No. 1 in July 2015 with&nbsp;<em>Before This World<\/em>&nbsp;\u2013 45 years and nearly four months after he made his chart debut with&nbsp;<em>Sweet Baby James&nbsp;<\/em>in March of 1970. The last group or band to wait as long as Megadeth for its first No. 1 was Black Sabbath. The latter hit No. 1 for the first time in June of 2013 with&nbsp;<em>13<\/em>&nbsp;\u2014 42 years and 10 months after the band made its chart debut with its self-titled set in 1970.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Megadeth also brings hard rock back to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 for the first time since last May, when&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/music\/chart-beat\/sleep-token-even-in-arcadia-number-one-billboard-200-chart-1235974933\/\">Sleep Token\u2019s&nbsp;<em>Even in Arcadia<\/em>&nbsp;opened atop<\/a>&nbsp;the May 24, 2025-dated chart. (Hard rock albums are defined as those that are eligible for, or have charted on,&nbsp;<em>Billboard<\/em>\u2019s Top Hard Rock Albums chart.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Morgan Wallen\u2019s former No. 1&nbsp;<em>I\u2019m the Problem<\/em>&nbsp;climbs 4-2 on the latest Billboard 200 with 69,000 equivalent album units earned (though down 7%). Olivia Dean\u2019s&nbsp;<em>The Art of Loving<\/em>&nbsp;bumps 7-3 (51,000, down 9%), Zach Bryan\u2019s chart-topping&nbsp;<em>With Heaven on Top<\/em>&nbsp;moves 5-4 (49,000, down 30%) and A$AP Rocky\u2019s&nbsp;<em>Don\u2019t Be Dumb<\/em>&nbsp;falls to No. 5 (46,000, down 63%) after debuting at No. 1 last week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Taylor Swift\u2019s former No. 1&nbsp;<em>The Life of a Showgirl<\/em>&nbsp;steps 8-6 (45,000 equivalent album units earned, down 15%) and YoungBoy Never Broke Again\u2019s&nbsp;<em>Slime Cry<\/em>&nbsp;slips 6-7 in its second week (41,000, down 42%). Three former No. 1s round out the rest of the top 10: the&nbsp;<em>KPop Demon Hunters<\/em>&nbsp;soundtrack is up a spot to No. 8 (40,000, down 14%), Bad Bunny\u2019s&nbsp;<em>DeB\u00cd TiRAR M\u00e1S FOToS&nbsp;<\/em>dips 3-9 (36,000, down 70%) and SZA\u2019s&nbsp;<em>SOS<\/em>&nbsp;rises 11-10 (35,000, down 6%).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Source: billboard.com<\/p>\n<div id=\"themify_builder_content-4793\" data-postid=\"4793\" class=\"themify_builder_content themify_builder_content-4793 themify_builder themify_builder_front\">\r\n\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n<!-- \/themify_builder_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The self-titled set marks the metal band&#8217;s final planned studio album. After a nearly 40-year wait,\u00a0Megadeth\u00a0achieves its first No. 1 album on the\u00a0Billboard 200\u00a0chart. The metal band\u2019s new self-titled set, which also marks its expected\u00a0final\u00a0studio album, debuts atop the list dated Feb. 7. Megadeth made its\u00a0Billboard 200\u00a0chart debut in 1986 and has placed 23 albums [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4794,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music-now","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","no-post-comment","no-post-author"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/musicnow.iprorecords.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/MEGADETH-cr-ROSS-HALFIN-press-25-billboard-1800.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicnow.iprorecords.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicnow.iprorecords.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicnow.iprorecords.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicnow.iprorecords.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicnow.iprorecords.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4793"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/musicnow.iprorecords.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4796,"href":"https:\/\/musicnow.iprorecords.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4793\/revisions\/4796"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicnow.iprorecords.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicnow.iprorecords.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicnow.iprorecords.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicnow.iprorecords.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}