Alex Warren’s (left) “Extraordinary” continues to climb up the Billboard Sizzling 100 chart. In the meantime Jack Black (proper) scores a shocking report with a really quick track from A Minecraft Film.
Photograph by Frazer Harrison/Getty Photos for Stagecoach; Photograph by Jerod Harris/Getty Photos for Warner Bros. Discovery
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Photograph by Frazer Harrison/Getty Photos for Stagecoach; Photograph by Jerod Harris/Getty Photos for Warner Bros. Discovery
It is a gradual week on the Billboard charts, but it surely’s nonetheless an enormous week for Kendrick Lamar and SZA. Their collaboration “Luther” holds at No. 1 for a tenth consecutive week — one in every of solely 46 songs to take action in chart historical past — whereas SZA’s SOS and Lamar’s GNX sit at Nos. 1 and a couple of on the albums chart, respectively. However this week’s charts do characteristic an all-time report price noting, as a 34-second track cracks the Sizzling 100.
TOP ALBUMS
Final week, the rapper Ken Carson debuted atop the Billboard 200 albums chart with Extra Chaos, his first-ever chart-topper. And, although it was a gradual week on the charts — Extra Chaos had the smallest accumulation of gross sales and streaming for any chart-topping album in three years — a No. 1 album is a No. 1 album.
Carson’s journey on the high was short-lived, nevertheless. This week, Extra Chaos plunges from No. 1 to No. 38, and with no main debuts to crash the social gathering — the very best debut of any album this week belongs to Wiz Khalifa, whose Kush + Orange Juice 2 bows at No. 62 — we’re left within the firm of the same old suspects.
Tourmates SZA and Kendrick Lamar have been sticking across the Billboard 200’s uppermost reaches all 12 months, and now SZA’s SOS and Kendrick Lamar’s GNX sit at Nos. 1 and a couple of, respectively — albeit with numbers even decrease than what Extra Chaos posted final week. Morgan Wallen is surging a bit (One Factor at a Time from No. 6 to No. 3 and Harmful: The Double Album from No. 14 to No. 9), which is no surprise given the pending arrival of his new album. However in any other case, there is not a lot motion to talk of, till you get to…
…No. 10, the place Grammy-winning rapper Doechii vaults into the Prime 10 for the primary time in her profession. Alligator Bites By no means Heal leaps from No. 24 to No. 10 due to a mix of things: The viral “Anxiousness” remains to be booming on the Sizzling 100 — it rises from No. 14 to No. 12 this week — whereas “Denial Is a River” remains to be floating round within the high 50 after peaking at No. 21 earlier this 12 months. The larger issue, although, is that the album acquired two new vinyl editions (obtainable solely at Goal and City Outfitters), in addition to its first-ever CD.
TOP SONGS
One byproduct of the streaming period is that blockbuster songs are posting ever-longer streaks at No. 1. Simply final 12 months, Shaboozey‘s “A Bar Tune (Tipsy)” tied an all-time report with 19 weeks atop the Sizzling 100 — and that track, many months later, nonetheless sits at No. 5. So it should not come as an enormous shock that Kendrick Lamar’s “Luther (feat. SZA)” is at No. 1 for a tenth consecutive week. Nevertheless it faces looming competitors from two completely different instructions.
The best risk to the reign of “Luther” is most probably Alex Warren‘s “Extraordinary,” which appears arrange for long-term (maybe even Shaboozey-level long-term) chart success. The track rises from No. 5 to No. 3 this week, due to a surge in each airplay and streaming; it is now No. 1 on Billboard‘s streaming chart and nonetheless has tons of room to maneuver as extra radio stations’ program administrators — who typically comply with the lead of streaming as of late — add it to their rotations.
At this level, it would not require an ideal reward of prognostication to recommend that you’ll hear this track in all places this summer time: at weddings, on the radio, on TikTok, through your streaming algorithms and so forth. You want heart-on-their-sleeve singer-songwriters like Lewis Capaldi? Choir-addicted uplift retailers like Coldplay? Rock-adjacent earworm farmers like Think about Dragons? You are gonna love this track. You most likely already do. You could be listening to it this very prompt, as you learn this.
The opposite main looming risk to “Luther” comes from nation sensation Morgan Wallen, who’s no stranger to the “track of the summer time” dialog, given the dominance of “Final Evening” and “I Had Some Assist” lately. Wallen will launch I am the Drawback on Might 16, however this week he extends a exceptional report: With the discharge of his Submit Malone collaboration “I Ain’t Coming Again” — the 2 collaborated on “I Had Some Assist” simply final 12 months — he is now landed six pre-release singles from I am the Drawback within the high 10 within the run-up to the discharge. The earlier report, held by Submit Malone and Taylor Swift, was 4.
At this level, there’s not a scintilla of doubt that the 37-song I am the Drawback might be a blockbuster. Nevertheless it stays unclear whether or not anyone new Wallen observe will take off as dramatically as “Final Evening” or “I Had Some Assist” did, given how a lot his new songs are competing with each other.
Wallen at present has 5 songs within the Sizzling 100’s high 20: “I am the Drawback,” which jumps from No. 10 to No. 7; “I Ain’t Coming Again,” which debuts at No. 8; “Simply in Case,” which slides from No. 11 to No. 14; “I Had Some Assist,” which climbs from No. 17 to No. 15 after almost a 12 months on the chart; and “Love Someone,” which ticks up from No. 20 to No. 17. That is a powerful pile-up of hits, however followers can solely stream one factor at a time.
WORTH NOTING
The rise of TikTok has difficult life for individuals who compile Billboard‘s chart rankings. In spite of everything, TikTok reputation typically leads and contributes to success on the pop charts. Nevertheless it’s tough to match streams of track fragments to streams of full songs.
After all, TikTok has modified the music trade in different methods, to the purpose the place some analysts have gone as far as to (very prematurely) predict that the app’s rise would result in unusually quick songs — not mere excerpts, however songs themselves — changing the three- and four-minute bangers that routinely spherical out the Sizzling 100.
Setting apart the occasional blockbuster that clocks in at lower than two minutes — lookin’ at you, pre-Billy Ray Cyrus model of “Previous City Street” — that prediction hasn’t come to cross. However there is a brand-new all-time report, set throughout this exceptionally gradual week on the Billboard charts, for the shortest-ever track to hit the Billboard Sizzling 100. (The Sizzling 100 dates again to August 1958.)
The track? “Steve’s Lava Rooster” by Jack Black, from A Minecraft Film. (Black, who stars within the movie as Steve, co-wrote the track with director Jared Hess.) Its size? Extremely, solely 34 seconds, although there’s a remix that drags it out to 1:22, which is basically a rock opera by comparability. The track’s debut chart place this week? No. 78.
“Steve’s Lava Rooster” is not Black’s first track to crack the Sizzling 100; that may be “The Decide of Future,” by his band Tenacious D, which additionally hit No. 78 again in 2006. And it isn’t the highest-charting hit of Black’s profession; in actual fact, “Steve’s Lava Rooster” is not even the highest-charting track Black has sung in a kid-friendly film franchise. That will be “Peaches,” which hit No. 56 on the energy of Black’s flip as Bowser in 2023’s The Tremendous Mario Bros. Film. (That track’s runtime was a relatively exhausting 1:35.)
It seems that, whereas a 34-second runtime constitutes an all-time report — not less than till Taylor Swift begins dabbling in skits — it is truly the third sub-1:00 track to crack the Sizzling 100. With a nod of appreciation to Gary Belief at Billboard and Paul Haney of Joel Whitburn’s Document Analysis, listed below are the 5 shortest songs ever to hit Billboard‘s major singles chart:
- Jack Black, “Steve’s Lava Rooster,” 0:34, No. 78 (2025)
- Child Cudi, “Lovely Journey,” 0:37, No. 100 (2020)
- Pikotaro, “PPAP (Pen-Pineapple-Apple-Pen),” 0:45, No. 77 (2016)
- The Womenfolk, “Little Bins,” 1:02, No. 83 (1964)
- Nat King Cole, “Deck the Halls,” 1:06, No. 16 (launched in 1960, peaked in 2022)
For these trying to sport out the chart way forward for “Steve’s Lava Rooster,” “Peaches” spent a complete of 5 weeks on the Sizzling 100 and even accrued a little bit of Oscar buzz. And, although “Peaches” didn’t make the lower for the Academy’s 15-track finest authentic track shortlist that 12 months, Black should not lose all hope for the awards way forward for “Steve’s Lava Rooster.” In spite of everything, there isn’t any rule that claims a 34-second track cannot win an Oscar.
