HAVE A HOLLY JOLLY CHART STORY
The Hamilton Mixtape, which brings together an array of popular artists to cover songs from the acclaimed Broadway musical, topped HITS’ Sales Plus Streaming (SPS) Chart this week with 190k for Uptown. The second-biggest debut belongs to The Rolling Stones; Blue & Lonesome—their new album of blues classics—comes in at #4 with 122k.
As for the remaining big bows, Childish Gambino’s “Awaken, My Love!” (Glassnote) debuts at #5 with 106k and 12-year-old America’s Got Talent winner (and America’s sweetheart) Grace VanderWaal appears at #8 with 52k for her very first EP, Perfectly Imperfect (SYCO/Columbia), while Kane Brown’s self-titled RCA Nashville/Zone 4 set comes in at #10 with 49k and John Legend’s Darkness and Light (Columbia) shows up at #15 with 35k.
In its second week out, The Weeknd’s Starboy (XO/Republic) slides gracefully to #2, earning another 155k. Pentatonix’s A Pentatonix Christmas (RCA), which dropped in October, also moves down a single spot from last week, landing at #3 and pulling in another 126k.
Interestingly, this is the first week of 2016 where the whole Top 5 is made of six-figure numbers. Makes sense; we do our best shopping under the influence of Peppermint Schnapps too.
Speaking of yuletide success, Pentatonix’s 2014 Christmas set, That’s Christmas to Me, sees more than a 30% bump this week, rising to #7 with 52k. Meanwhile, Mariah Carey’s Merry Christmas (Columbia) re-enters the Top 30, Vince Guaraldi Trio’s Charlie Brown Christmas (Fantasy) goes #40-36, Josh Groban’s Noel (Reprise) re-enters at #41 and Neil Diamond’s Acoustic Christmas (Capitol) re-enters at #42.
And J. Cole’s 2014 Forest Hills Drive (Roc Nation/Columbia)—released in 2014…duh—re-enters the chart at #31 in tandem with the release of the hip-hop star’s new album, 4 Your Eyez Only (Dreamville/Interscope), which will dominate next week’s chart.
As for SPS marketshare, there’s UMG at #1 with 41%, SME at #2 with 28%, WMG at #3 with 26% and (thanks to Garth Brooks and his four charting titles) indies at #4 with 5%.
Over on the Album Sales Chart, The Hamilton Mixtape and A Pentatonix Christmas can also be found at #1 and #3 with 171k and 114k, respectively. However, here, Rolling Stones are #2 with 120k, Childish Gambino is #4 with 76k and The Weeknd is #5 with 61k.
And the results from the Album Sales marketshare battle look similar to the SPS ones, with UMG leading the chart at #1 with 37%, while SME, WMG and the indies follow with 28%, 26% and 10%, respectively.
Streeting this week are albums from the aforementioned J. Cole, Reprise’s Neil Young, Republic’s Kid Cudi and the latter’s labelmate Post Malone. The Republic-helmed soundtrack to Universal’s forthcoming animated feature, Sing, is also dropping this week. Now, please excuse us as we return to singing our favorite Christmas carols to our cats.
