SZA’s “SOS” easily squeezed past the holiday and year-end bustle to top the Billboard 200 with the fifth-best debut week of 2022, also becoming the R&B singer’s first No. 1 album on the list.
With genre-crossing features from guests including Travis Scott and Phoebe Bridgers, “SOS” posted 318,000 album units in the U.S. in its opening week, a majority of the sum being powered by the punch of its streaming activity. The 23-song set logged 405 million on-demand streams, earning the second-largest streaming week ever for an album by a female artist (Swift’s “Midnights” tallied 549.26 million), and the third-largest streaming week of the year for any album (behind “Midnights” and Drake and 21 Savage’s “Her Loss”), according to Billboard.
Prior to the record’s Dec. 9 arrival, three singles debuted on the Billboard Hot 100: “Good Days,” “Shirt” and “I Hate U.” This week, two newly released “SOS” songs take slots in the top 10: “Kill Bill,” at No. 3, and “Nobody Gets Me,” at No. 10.
Despite the heavyweight numbers, the singer recently opened up about the feelings of insecurity surrounding the album — her first in five years. (“Ctrl” debuted and peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 in June of 2017 and has yet to leave the weekly Billboard 200 after 288 consecutive weeks on the chart.)
“I never thought in a million years that people would like it,” she told Rolling Stone. “Even when I was [doing the] track listing, I was like, ‘Ugh, this shit is so boring’ or ‘it sucks,’ or when I couldn’t get some of the things I wanted for the initial cover idea or things weren’t working out, I’m like, ‘let’s just put it out with no cover and just leave everything blank.’”
As previously stated, “SOS” joins the top five of the year’s biggest debuts, a list topped by Taylor Swift’s “Midnights,” which came out of the gate with 1.6 million album units; it remains at No. 2 on the Billboard 200. Harry Styles’ “Harry’s House,” Drake and 21 Savage’s “Her Loss” and Beyoncé’s “Renaissance” are the three albums between Swift and SZA on the ranking of 2022’s top debuts.
Metro Boomin’s “Heroes & Villains” falls 1-3 on the Billboard 200 after dominating the list in its opening week (102,000 units); “Her Loss” is at No. 4 (67,000 units) and Michael Bublé’s “Christmas” stays at No. 5 (62,000 units).
New in the top 10 of the albums chart this week is A Boogie Wit da Hoodie’s “Me vs. Myself,” which earned the New York rapper his fourth top 10-charting album on the Billboard 200. It launched onto the chart at No. 6 with 66.92 million on-demand streams contributing to a total of 53,000 album units. Bad Bunny’s former No. 1 “Un Verano Sin Ti” slides from its No. 4 mark to No. 7 with 51,000 album units earned, while Nat King Cole’s “The Christmas Song” lifts 9-8 with approximately 47,000 units and the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s “A Charlie Brown Christmas” soundtrack is at No. 9 with 47,000 units.
Meanwhile, Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” goes from 7-10 with 45,000 units in its 100th nonconsecutive week in the top 10 of the albums chart. (The country star has a way to go in setting an all-time record; according to Billboard, the original cast recording of “My Fair Lady” holds the record of most weeks spent in the top 10 of the chart, with 173 weeks between 1956-60.)
Holiday classics take six out of the top 10 slots in the Hot 100 this week, with Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” leading the list for the 10th time in its history; Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” originally released in 1958, holds at No. 2 (thanks to 40.9 million streams); Bobby Helms’ 1957 hit “Jingle Bell Rock” falls 3-4; the late Burl Ives’ “A Holly Jolly Christmas” (1964) is at No. 5; Wham!’s “Last Christmas” rises 9-6 and Andy Williams’ 1963 “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” rises 11-8.
In-between the festive singles, and apart from the two new SZA song entries, Swift’s “Anti-Hero” is nuzzled at No. 7 and Sam Smith and Kim Petras’ “Unholy” slips 7-9.
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