For the fifth consecutive week, Morgan Wallen’s I am the Downside tops the Billboard 200 albums chart.
John Shearer/Getty Photos for for Morgan Wall/Getty Photos North America
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John Shearer/Getty Photos for for Morgan Wall/Getty Photos North America
For the fifth consecutive week, Morgan Wallen‘s I am the Downside tops the Billboard 200 albums chart. However there’s loads of volatility beneath him on the chart, as final week’s debuts vanish from the highest 10 to make room for brand spanking new albums by the Okay-pop group ATEEZ, rapper Lil Tecca and Christian rock star Brandon Lake. The Scorching 100 singles chart is much much less eventful — Alex Warren‘s “Abnormal” reclaims the No. 1 spot from Sabrina Carpenter‘s “Manchild,” whereas the highest 10 is in any other case unchanged — however the newest charts replicate an intriguing second of crossover for artists specializing in modern Christian music.
TOP ALBUMS
Nonetheless 2025’s “tune of the summer time” sweepstakes finally ends up enjoying out, there is a clear-cut “album of the summer time.” Morgan Wallen’s 37-song opus I am the Downside debuted at No. 1 5 weeks in the past and hasn’t been critically challenged for the highest spot since. It is a run fueled largely by streaming, and people numbers have pale solely incrementally since his large debut. On condition that I am the Downside‘s two most up-to-date predecessors (2023’s One Factor at a Time and 2021’s Harmful: The Double Album) are additionally within the high 10, we’re probably taking a look at a chart run that’ll be measured in years, not months.
I am the Downside‘s sturdiness is very spectacular in mild of the rapidity with which different albums have disappeared from the highest 10 in current weeks. Final week, a whopping 5 albums entered or re-entered the highest 10 — Lil Wayne‘s Tha Carter VI, ENHYPEN‘s Need: Unleash, Addison Rae‘s Addison, Turnstile‘s NEVER ENOUGH and a reissue of My Chemical Romance‘s 2004 album Three Cheers for Candy Revenge — and all 5 of them have dropped out seven days later. (At the very least Lil Wayne and ENHYPEN stay within the high 20; Turnstile drops to No. 96, whereas MCR sinks to No. 122.)
They’re changed by a mixture of outdated reliables and contemporary debuts. The Okay-pop group ATEEZ enters the chart at No. 2, notching its seventh profession high 10 album with GOLDEN HOUR: Half.3. However with the overwhelming majority of its numbers derived from gross sales — and the standard bodily variant editions to grab on superfans’ pleasure — its run within the chart’s higher areas will nearly definitely be temporary. Rapper Lil Tecca reaches a brand new profession excessive with the debut of DOPAMINE at No. 3; it will doubtless show sturdier, given its streaming numbers, however will nonetheless nearly definitely dip within the weeks to return. And at No. 7, modern Christian singer Brandon Lake hits a profession excessive by a mile (extra on him under) with King of Hearts.
TOP SONGS
Final week, Sabrina Carpenter joined the “tune of the summer time” chat in an enormous means, as “Manchild” — the primary single from her forthcoming album Man’s Finest Pal, due out August 29 — debuted at No. 1 on the Scorching 100. It was a welcome shake-up of a chart that has sunk into critical stasis in current months.
This week, Alex Warren’s “Abnormal” reclaims its spot atop the chart for a 3rd nonconsecutive week. Each songs are getting added to business radio stations’ playlists at a brisk clip — ideas and prayers for programmers struggling to search out room amid the eleventy-quadrillionth spins of Teddy Swims‘ “Lose Management” and Benson Boone‘s “Lovely Issues” — so search for Warren and Carpenter to maintain duking it out because the summer time wears on.
In the event you’re searching for chart motion elsewhere within the high 10, then you definately in all probability have not spent a lot time scanning the Billboard charts recently. Other than Warren and Carpenter swapping spots, the complete high 10 is a rerun of final week’s, in the very same order: You bought your three Morgan Wallen songs, your three Methuselahs — “Lose Management,” “Lovely Issues,” Shaboozey‘s “A Bar Music (Tipsy)” — and two barely less-ancient songs from 2024: Girl Gaga and Bruno Mars‘ “Die With a Smile” and Kendrick Lamar‘s “Luther (feat. SZA).”
So… yeah. Here is to a different week of doldrums! You can get a job forecasting the climate in San Diego, staffing the Strombolicchio Lighthouse or updating a business pop radio station’s playlist; you will be comparably busy.
WORTH NOTING
Earlier this month, Emma Madden wrote an interesting piece for NPR Music that broke down the second modern Christian music is having on the pop charts. Crossover from the Christian-music charts is nothing new — even for those who do not bear in mind Pat and Debby Boone, you may recall the chart hits of Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith — however CCM artists have skilled unmistakable chart momentum in current months.
Emma’s piece centered largely on two artists, one in every of whom experiences an enormous chart surge this week. Along with Forrest Frank, who’s been hanging round within the Scorching 100 with “Your Method’s Higher” for 9 weeks now, Brandon Lake crashes this week’s Billboard 200 albums chart with King of Hearts, which debuts at No. 7. On condition that Lake’s earlier chart peak, for 2023’s Coat of Many Colours, was No. 135, the man’s clearly having a big second. (The final album of Christian music to chart that top was KING + COUNTRY’s What Are We Ready For? in 2022.)
Lake has been constructing to this second for years. His single “Arduous Fought Hallelujah,” which contains a visitor look by Jelly Roll, charted as excessive as No. 40 final month — it climbs from No. 75 to No. 52 this week — and its reign atop Billboard‘s Scorching Christian Songs chart now spans roughly 5 months. Even outdoors that crossover hit, Lake has dominated the Scorching Christian Songs chart for years; he is charted dozens of songs (six of them at No. 1) there since his emergence in 2019. However he is a real crossover star now, with the highest 10 debut to again it up.
It is unusual, no less than in recent times, for 2 CCM artists — outlined on this case as acts whose work primarily hits the Scorching Christian Songs chart — to share Scorching 100 runs concurrently. However the success of Lake and Frank solely hints at a bigger surge for Christian music.
It is exhausting to listen to Alex Warren’s “Abnormal” — a celebration of lifetime love that surges into the ringing voices of an enormous choir — and never hear echoes of reward music. Warren’s background as a squeaky-clean TikTok star has rendered him uniquely well-positioned to take care of footholds in each the secular and Christian pop worlds. Elsewhere, along with “Arduous Fought Hallelujah,” Jelly Roll — whose personal songs straddle nation, soul, pop and modern Christian music — turns up on two different tracks within the Scorching 100: “Bloodline” (by Alex Warren) and “Amen” (by Shaboozey).
Will extra CCM artists be a part of Lake and Frank — to not point out Warren and Jelly Roll — in storming the Scorching 100 because the summer time of 2025 simmers on? God solely is aware of.
