Bad Bunny Beats Taylor Swift in Extremely Tight Race to No. 1 on Albums Chart
Bad Bunny‘s “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” ascends to No. 1 after its first full tracking week, becoming the reggaeton star’s fourth album to hit the peak. It was a tight race to the summit as the 17-song set climbed to No. 1 with just 1,000 units over Taylor Swift’s “Lover (Live From Paris)” vinyl reissue, which the singer put up for sale in her webstore Jan. 7.
In the tracking week ending Jan. 16, “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” earned 203,500 units as Swift’s “Lover: Live From Paris” reentered the list with 202,500 units (all from album sales) following its reissue on vinyl (161,000 sold for the week), and first-ever release as a digital download.
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Bad Bunny debuted at No. 2 in the previous week with only five days of activity as Billboard (and its data partner Luminate) only count units Friday through Thursday, while “Debí” was released on a Sunday (Jan. 5). “Debí’s” climb to the top was largely powered by its first full week of streaming activity, which tallied up 264 million streams. The Spanish-language album was only available as a standard LP and as a digital download for purchase. Traditional album sales logged just under 8,000 of the album’s activity for the week.
It’s quite the opposite story for Swift whose album was exclusively available only to purchase as either a vinyl LP or download. Swift’s vinyl copies almost instantly sold out, propelling “Lover (Live From Paris)” to easily surpass its previous peak of No. 58 on the Billboard 200 chart. Upon that initial — and very limited — drop in February 2023, the “Live From Paris” edition went on to sell for well over $1,000 on second-hand retail shops and webstores.
It is the top-selling album of the week and the highest-charting live album on the Billboard 200 in over five years (also the single-largest sales week for a live album on vinyl since Luminate began tracking sales in 1991). Not since Lionel Richie’s 2019 release, “Hello From Las Vegas,” has a live album charted this high.
Outside of Swift and Bad Bunny, there are no new releases in the the Top 10 this week: SZA’s “SOS” holds at No. 3, followed by Kendrick Lamar’s “GNX” at No. 4, Lil Baby’s “Wham” slips to no. 5 after a week at No. 1 and Sabrina Carpenter’s “Short n’ Sweet” is at No. 6. Billie Eilish’s “Hit Me Hard and Soft” keeps at No. 7; Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” is at No. 9; and Gracie Abrams’ “The Secret of Us” rounds out the top at No. 10.
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