Thanks to a deluxe reissue containing five new songs, Ariana Grande's 2024 album, Eternal Sunshine, races from No. 87 all the way back to No. 1, where it first debuted last spring. Over on the Hot 100 singles chart, Kendrick Lamar's "Luther (feat. SZA)" sits in the top spot for a seventh consecutive week. Oh, and this marks the week Pat Boone makes his long-awaited move toward chart domination. Read on.
TOP ALBUMS
At the very top of this week's Billboard 200 albums chart, it's looking like spring — or, to be more specific, the spring of 2024, when Ariana Grande's Eternal Sunshine topped the chart for the very first time. That album has been a mainstay on the charts ever since, producing a pair of No. 1 singles in "we can't be friends (wait for your love)" and "yes, and?" while helping lay the groundwork for the singer's Oscar-nominated, similarly chart-storming turn in Wicked. Now, thanks to a deluxe reissue, Eternal Sunshine leaps from No. 87 all the way back to No. 1 in its 56th week on the chart.
Eternal Sunshine Deluxe: Brighter Days Ahead contains an extended version of "intro (end of the world)," as well as five new songs. Bolstered by streaming, all six additions to Eternal Sunshine land on this week's Hot 100 singles chart, led by "twilight zone," at No. 18. But the expanded album isn't just a hit on streaming: Thanks to digital sales and the availability of Eternal Sunshine's deluxe edition on vinyl and CD, it's the week's top seller, as well.
Deluxe reissues that add bonus tracks to recent hit albums are nothing new. In fact, they've become a standard weapon in the promotional arsenal of any major star who's seeking a chart boost. Sometimes, artists release deluxe editions mere hours after an album's release, as when Taylor Swift virtually doubled the length of The Tortured Poets Department the night it first became available. Just last week, Playboi Carti's MUSIC held on at No. 1 in its second week, thanks in part to the strategic drop of four additional tracks. (In its third week, MUSIC slips from No. 1 to No. 2 to make room for Eternal Sunshine.)
But Grande's gambit is more in line with SZA's move to expand her 2022 smash SOS late last year. Adding 15 songs to the already-supersized SOS sent the album hurtling all the way back to the top of the Billboard 200 after a gap of more than a year, and SOS still sits at No. 6 more than two years after its release. Eternal Sunshine Deluxe: Brighter Days Ahead isn't as ambitious in its scope as SOS Deluxe: LANA. But at least in week one, the result is the same.
Elsewhere on the Billboard 200, three albums debut in this week's top 20: Presently incarcerated rapper Lil Durk lands at No. 3 with Deep Thoughts — his seventh album to hit the top 10 — while Lucy Dacus' Forever Is a Feeling bows at No. 16 and Mumford & Sons' Rushmere enters the chart at No. 19.
TOP SONGS
There's less action on the Hot 100 singles chart, as Kendrick Lamar's "Luther (feat. SZA)" holds at No. 1 for a seventh consecutive week. That's the longest run for a hip-hop song since 24kGoldn's "Mood (feat. iann dior)" was No. 1 for eight weeks in 2020 and 2021, though it's got a ways to go if it's going to match 2024's longest run at No. 1: Shaboozey's "A Bar Song (Tipsy)," which still sits at No. 4, topped the chart for a record-tying 19 weeks last year.
Elsewhere in the top 10, one track makes a notable jump this week: Drake's "Nokia" leaps from No. 7 to No. 3 in its seventh week on the chart, thanks in part to the release of its official video. In the process, "Nokia" extends an all-time record for Drake: He's got the most top-five hits in chart history, with 42. (In second place, with 36: Taylor Swift.)
With the usual venerated suspects rounding out the top 10 — Teddy Swims' "Lose Control," Billie Eilish's "Birds of a Feather," two tracks by Morgan Wallen and so on — it's worth mentioning a song that's been making serious moves up the Hot 100. In the past month, Alex Warren's "Ordinary" has climbed steadily, bounding from No. 64 to No. 43 to No. 35 to No. 20. This week, it races from No. 20 to No. 14, with substantial room for growth as more people hear it and it inevitably pops up on wedding playlists.
If you haven't heard it, "Ordinary" — which has already topped the charts in the U.K., Australia and several other countries — fuses the earnest singer-songwriterliness of a Lewis Capaldi with the earnest, let's-hear-from-the-choir uplift of Coldplay and a zillion praise songs, with a sweet video that stars the singer and his real-life wife. Warren had already amassed an enormous social-media following via TikTok and YouTube prior to the release of "Ordinary," and his debut album, You'll Be Alright, Kid (Chapter 1), leaps from No. 48 to a new peak at No. 24 this week. So if you're bored with all the stasis on the pop charts lately, get ready for a little bit of turnover. This one's likely to stick around for a while.
WORTH NOTING
It's not often that this column keeps up with the goings-on at the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart. But there's a milestone this week that few saw coming.
Pat Boone used to be a staple of the Billboard charts, as the famously straitlaced crooner sold tens of millions of records en route to a prolific and enormously successful career across TV, radio and books. Much of his early chart success came from his status as a wholesome counterpart to Elvis Presley — and from a lucrative willingness to re-record R&B songs by Black artists. (His early hits included covers of Fats Domino's "Ain't That a Shame" and Little Richard's "Tutti Frutti.")
When Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart was introduced in July 1961, Boone was on it. And, though his chart career has waned in the nearly 64 years since — his last song to land on the Adult Contemporary chart was "Indiana Girl" in 1975 — Boone has continued to write and record music. Now, for the first time in nearly half a century, he's back on the AC chart with "One: Voices for Tanzania," which is credited to Pat Boone World Missions.
As its title suggests, the song is a benefit for infrastructure projects in Tanzania — clean-water initiatives in particular — and features an assortment of country and gospel singers, including Lee Greenwood, Vince Gill and Larry Gatlin. "One: Voices for Tanzania" doesn't qualify as a blockbuster for entering the Adult Contemporary chart at No. 30, but it's still worth noting when a 90-year-old artist hits the charts. (Before this week, Boone's most recent appearance on a Billboard chart came in 2007, when his album We Are Family: R&B Classics made a brief appearance on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. Who's to say Pat Boone and hip-hop don't go hand-in-hand?)
In returning to the Adult Contemporary rankings, Boone has set a new record for the longest span between songs on that particular chart — 63 years, eight months and three weeks — which makes sense, given that he's been on both its oldest and newest possible iterations. But he's going to have to stay busy if he wants to maintain his record: In second and third place are Dean Martin (from 1964 through this past holiday season) and Nat "King" Cole (from 1961 through 2022), both of whom tend to resurface on various Billboard charts around the holidays. Still, Boone's got a decent shot at returning someday; after all, if Perry Como and Paul Anka can revisit the pop charts each holiday season, why couldn't Pat Boone? Worse things have happened, difficult as that may be to believe.
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