Travis Scott finally soars to No. 1 on the strength of vinyl : NPR

The Billboard charts are fickle this week. Sure, Shaboozey remains immovable at the top of the Hot 100 singles chart, where “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” sits for an 11th nonconsecutive week. But on the albums chart, Sabrina Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet is displaced from No. 1 by the 10th-anniversary release of Travis Scott’s 2014 mixtape Days Before Rodeo. That record leaps from No. 106 all the way to No. 1, thanks to a massive flood of vinyl sales. And, while physical media also help propel Eminem back into the top 10, last week’s most prominent debuts all take massive plunges — in many cases off the charts entirely.

TOP ALBUMS

Earlier this month, the battle for the No. 1 spot on the Billboard 200 albums chart came down to a neck-and-neck race between pop star Sabrina Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet and rapper Travis Scott’s Days Before Rodeo, a mixtape which had just received an official release in conjunction with its 10th anniversary. Both albums’ numbers were goosed by variant editions and/or online discounts, and the race was so close that Scott’s team even disputed Billboard’s chart data when Carpenter eked out the top spot, with Scott coming in at No. 2.

From there, though, Short n’ Sweet seemed far more durable, as it held at No. 1 for three weeks while Days Before Rodeo slid from No. 2 to No. 30, then to No. 106. This week, though, Scott’s fortunes have improved dramatically, thanks to a phenomenon that vastly predates the advent of online streaming: vinyl sales. Days Before Rodeo is newly credited with sales of roughly 149,000 vinyl copies — the most any hip-hop album has sold on vinyl in one week during the streaming era — and soars all the way from No. 106 to the No. 1 spot it had been denied three weeks earlier. All of those vinyl copies were sold via Scott’s webstore, which had several different deluxe editions on offer.

There’s a fair bit of precedent for vinyl-fueled chart climbs. In 2022, for example, Tyler, The Creator’s Call Me If You Get Lost soared from No. 120 to No. 1 on the strength of its vinyl release. And Scott isn’t the only rapper to benefit from physical media this week: Eminem’s The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grace), which topped the chart earlier this summer, rebounds from No. 42 to No. 7 thanks to a deluxe reissue and a release on CD. (A high-profile slot performing in the opening moments of the VMAs can’t have hurt, either.)

Carpenter holds down the No. 2 spot this week, followed by Chappell Roan’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess (holding steady at No. 3) and a whole bunch of sliders: Post Malone’s F-1 Trillion (No. 2 to No. 4), Morgan Wallen’s One Thing at a Time (No. 4 to No. 5), Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department (No. 5 to No. 6), Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft (No. 6 to No. 8), Noah Kahan’s Stick Season (No. 8 to No. 9) and Zach Bryan’s The Great American Bar Scene (No. 7 to No. 10).

TOP SONGS

Yet again, there are no new entries in the top 10 — and there’s only minimal shuffling among the old reliables. Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” has now logged 11 nonconsecutive weeks at No. 1, tying it for fourth place among songs that have spent the most weeks at the top of the chart in the 2020s, followed by yet another week at No. 2 for Post Malone’s “I Had Some Help,” featuring Morgan Wallen. Sabrina Carpenter has three songs in the top 10 for another week: “Espresso” (No. 3), “Taste” (No. 8) and “Please Please Please” (No. 9).

Rounding out the top 10, Chappell Roan hits a new chart peak with “Good Luck, Babe!” (which climbs from No. 7 to No. 4), Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars’ “Die With a Smile” slides from No. 4 to No. 5, Billie Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather” dips from No. 5 to No. 6, Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control” ticks up from No. 9 to No. 7 and Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” stays locked in at No. 10. Roan and Swims at least appear to have experienced a bump from high-profile performances at the VMAs on Sept. 11, but it can be tricky to glean the exact source of chart movement from week to week.

For those who lament the Hot 100’s late-summer stasis, there’s a bit of hope to be found in the top 20 — most notably in the chart debuts of three new songs. The Weeknd, who knows a little something about tracks that linger on the charts, enters this week’s Hot 100 at No. 14 with “Dancing in the Flames,” while Playboi Carti’s “All Red” pops up just behind it at No. 15. Pop singer Tate McRae’s “It’s Ok I’m Ok” also enters the Hot 100, coming in at No. 20.

WORTH NOTING

Last week, this column noted the frequency with which new albums experience lofty chart debuts, only to plummet precipitously in the weeks to follow. It’s a common Billboard trajectory these days, especially given how many catalog titles and greatest-hits collections clog up the chart for years on end. So when six albums debuted in the top 50 last week, I couldn’t help but wonder how long they’d last, given how quickly other albums had burned out in recent months.

Well, they all collapsed.

The most fortunate among them, singer-songwriter Jessie Murph’s That Ain’t No Man That’s the Devil, fell from No. 24 to No. 97; her descent may have been slowed, at least a little, by her VMAs appearance. But four of the six dropped off the charts entirely: George Strait’s Cowboys and Dreamers (No. 14 last week), K-pop singer Tzuyu’s abouTZU: The 1st Mini Album (No. 19), Paris Hilton’s Infinite Icon (for which “infinity” turned out to be “one week at No. 38”) and LL Cool J’s The Force (No. 50) are all nowhere to be found. The other title, David Gilmour’s Luck and Strange, has now seen both ends of the Billboard 200 up close: It debuted at No. 10 last week and now, seven days later, sits at No. 198.

So it’s with only the tiniest shred of optimism that I note the following chart debuts: Miranda Lambert’s Postcards From Texas (No. 21), keshi’s Requiem (No. 27) and BOYNEXTDOOR’s 19.99 (No. 40). I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Don’t get too attached.