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For the second time in less than a month, a whopping nine of the top 10 albums on Billboard’s Top Album Sales are debuts, as Nos. 1-9 on the chart dated May 29 are all new entries. The tally housed nine top 10 debuts just two weeks ago, on the chart dated May 15 — and that week marked the first time since last October there were nine debuts in the top 10.
Further, for the first time in 2021, the top five selling albums of the week sold at least 20,000 copies each.
J. Cole leads the chart, as his new album The Off-Season debuts at No. 1 on Top Album Sales with 37,000 sold in the U.S. in the week ending May 20, according to MRC Data. It’s the hip-hop star’s sixth No. 1 on the list, which comprises all six of his studio efforts.
At Nos. 2-9 on the new chart, there are debuting albums from The Black Keys, Alan Jackson, ENHYPEN, St. Vincent, Phoebe Bridgers featuring Rob Moose, Nicki Minaj, Yoko Yakahashi and Megumi Hayashibara and Myles Kennedy.
Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart ranks the top-selling albums of the week based only on traditional album sales. The chart’s history dates back to May 25, 1991, the first week Billboard began tabulating charts with electronically monitored piece count information from SoundScan, now MRC Data. Pure album sales were the measurement solely utilized by the Billboard 200 albums chart through the list dated Dec. 6, 2014, after which that chart switched to a methodology that blends album sales with track equivalent album units and streaming equivalent album units. For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both Twitter and Instagram.
All of The Off-Season’s 37,000 copies sold came from digital album sales, as the set was not released on any physical formats. It’s J. Cole’s first studio album not to be released initially on CD.
The Black Keys’ new blues covers project, Delta Kream, bows at No. 2 on Top Album Sales with 30,000 sold. Of that sum, physical album sales comprise 22,000 (with 14,000 vinyl LPs and 8,000 CDs) while digital album sales comprise 8,000. The set also debuts at No. 1 on both the Vinyl Albums and Tastemaker Albums charts. The former ranks the week’s top-selling vinyl albums, while the latter tallies the top-selling albums at independent record stores.
Country king Alan Jackson debuts at No. 3 on Top Album Sales with his new studio set Where Have You Gone, selling 27,000 copies. Of that sum, physical album sales comprise 18,000 (all from CDs), while digital album sales comprise 9,000. Where Have You Gone is Jackson’s 16th top 10 and highest charting title since 2012’s No. 2-peaking Thirty Miles West. Where Have You Gone is also the top-selling country album of the week.
South Korean boy band ENHYPEN lands its first top 10, as Border: Carnival bows at No. 4, selling just over 20,000 copies – effectively all from CD sales. The album was available in four collectible CD editions, similar to other K-pop titles, with alternative packaging and randomized internal paper elements (liner notes, poster, photo cards, etc.).
St. Vincent lands her second top 10 on Top Album Sales, as her latest studio effort, Daddy’s Home, bows at No. 5 with 20,000 sold. Of that sum, 17,000 comprise physical albums (12,000 vinyl LPs; 4,000 CDs and 1,000 cassettes and 8-track cartridges) while 3,000 comprise downloads. Daddy’s Home was issued on multiple vinyl variants, as well as three cassette tapes and even an 8-track tape (exclusively sold via the artist’s official webstore).
As Daddy’s Home rounds out the top five on Top Album Sales, for the first time in 2021, the top five selling albums of the week sold at least 20,000 copies each. The last time the top five each sold at least 20,000 was on the Jan. 2-dated chart (reflecting the sales week ending Dec. 24, 2020). That week, every title in the top 10 sold at least 20,000, led by the No. 1 debut of Paul McCartney’s McCartney III (104,000).
The last time outside of the Christmas shopping season (generally defined as Thanksgiving through Christmas) where the top five titles each sold at least 20,000 was on the Oct. 31, 2020-dated chart, reflecting the sales week ending Oct. 22.
Phoebe Bridgers’ remix EP Copycat Killer, featuring Rob Moose, debuts at No. 6 on the new Top Album Sales chart with 11,000 sold thanks to its wide release on vinyl LP (nearly all of its sales for the week were on vinyl). Copycat was initially released in November 2020 as a digital album and a Rough Trade-exclusive vinyl EP. The four-song set contains alternative orchestral arrangements (in collaboration with arranger Moose) of songs originally found on Bridgers’ Punisher album.
Nicki Minaj’s mixtape Beam Me Up Scotty starts at No. 7 with nearly 11,000 sold (all from digital downloads). Beam Me Up Scotty was initially released for free in 2009, but was not commercially issued or distributed to streaming services until May 14, 2021. The new version of the album houses most of the tracks from the 2009 release and adds three new cuts: “Seeing Green,” with Drake and Lil Wayne, “Fractions” and “Crocodile Teeth” (remix) with Skillibeng.
Evangelion: Finally debuts at No. 8 with nearly 9,000 sold – almost exclusively from vinyl LP sales. The album features songs by Yoko Takahashi and Megumi Hayashibara as heard in the anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion and Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance. While the album was initially released digitally and on CD last December, it did not reach vinyl (across multiple color variants) until May 14.
Myles Kennedy’s second solo studio album The Ides of March debuts at No. 9 on Top Album Sales, selling 7,000 copies. It’s the fourth top 10 for Kennedy, following three earlier top 10s with Slash and The Conspirators.
Closing out the top 10 is Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia, which re-enters at No. 10 with nearly 7,000 sold (up 261%). Its surge is owed mostly to vinyl LP sales, as of its sales sum for the week, vinyl LPs represent 5,000 of that total (up 841%). The album’s expanded deluxe edition, dubbed The Moonlight Edition, was issued on vinyl on May 14.
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In a surprise move, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced Wednesday (May 26) that it is seeking to slow the rate of growth of its new members.
“To ensure the necessary infrastructure, staff resources and environment to support all Academy members, this year’s growth in membership will be limited to roughly half that of recent years,” the Academy said in a statement. “This modification will enable steady future growth and allow the Academy to continue serving its membership in a more personal manner.”
Last year, the Academy invited 819 people to join its ranks — 45% of them women, 36% underrepresented ethnic/racial minorities, and 49% from outside the U.S., according to Academy number-crunchers.
It was the fifth consecutive year in which the Academy invited more than 600 new members to join its ranks. It invited 683 new members in 2016, 774 in 2017, 928 in 2018 (the peak year of the drive to expand its membership) and 842 in 2019. By contrast, it invited just 322 new members in 2015.
The Academy insists that “representation, inclusion and equity remain a priority.”
“As we look to the future growth and goals of the Academy, we need to scale appropriately so we can continue to give the personal service our members have come to expect and appreciate,” said Academy CEO Dawn Hudson. “We remain focused on cultivating a membership body that reflects our diverse film community and the world around us.”
Ahead of this change, the Academy’s board of governors voted on branch-specific guidelines to be applied in determining this year’s new membership invitees. Oscar winners and nominees will be considered without limitation by applicable branches.
The Academy push to expand and diversify its membership followed the #OscarsSoWhite scandals in 2015 and 2016, when, for two years running, all 20 acting nominees were white. In 2016, the Academy set specific inclusion goals (as part of its A2020 initiative) to double the number of women and underrepresented ethnic/racial communities by 2020. The Academy announced last year that it had surpassed those twin goals.
The percentage of Academy members who are women jumped from 25% in 2015 to 33% in 2020. The percentage who are from racial and ethnic minorities nearly doubled, jumping from 10% in 2015 to 19% in 2020.
The Academy reports that it is “committed to advancing its Aperture 2025 initiative, furthering goals to increase equity and inclusion in the stories told through film, elevate different voices within Academy leadership, and provide opportunities to amplify these voices across multiple sectors in the industry.”
There is evidence that the Academy’s diversity efforts have had an effect.
Nine of the 20 Oscar nominations for acting this year went to actors of color — a record.
It was a banner year for diversity in other categories as well. This year marked the first time that two women have been nominated for best director in the same year: Chloé Zhao (Nomadland) and Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman). Zhao became the first woman of color to win (or even be nominated) in that category.
Significantly, Judas and the Black Messiah became the first film with an all-Black producing team — Shaka King, Charles D. King and Ryan Coogler — to be nominated for best picture.
The movie won two Oscars. Daniel Kaluuya, as was widely expected, won best actor in a supporting role. And in a major upset, H.E.R., Dernst Emile II and Tiara Thomas won best original song for “Fight for You.”
[Spoiler alert: This story contains the identity of the winner of Wednesday night’s (May 26) season five finale of The Masked Singer.]
When the propeller beanie came off at the end of Wednesday night’s (May 26) finale, the winner of season 5 of The Masked Singer almost felt like a foregone conclusion. It was a tight three-way face-off between the Black Swan, Chameleon and Piglet, but, c’mon, you knew all along that the Pig had it all sow-n up.
The night started with a triple duet featuring last season’s champ, LeAnn Rimes, on her 1997 smash “How Do I Live,” before Piglet proved he was the one to beat with an emotional, balloon-maze wallow through Journey’s “Faithfully” as his final song.
If you were paying attention all along, though, it seemed pretty obvious from the beginning that Piglet was on his way to a victory. Among his standout performances were Dan + Shay’s “Speechless,” Lewis Capaldi’s emotional “Bruises,” a tear-jerker “Against All Odds” by Phil Collins, Lukas Graham’s “7 Years,” the praiseworthy “Good to Be Alive (Hallelujah)” by Andy Grammer and a rumble to the rock side for the Foo Fighters’ “The Pretender.”
It was his final song, though, that got the panel, and the former boy band singer, all choked up, even as panelist Ken Jeong once again proved that his picker is on another planet by hoisting wildly improbable Avengers: Endgame star Jeremy Renner as his final guess. Jenny McCarthy Wahlberg and Rimes totally nailed it, with Rimes saying she could even hear the singer’s speaking voice in his vocals.
So after 11 weeks of surprises — from Kermit the Frog to Bobby Brown, Caitlyn Jenner, Danny Trejo, Logan Paul, Nick Cannon, Tyrese, Tamera Mowry-Housley to triple threat Hanson and Omarion — the show’s second pandemic-affected season sizzled to a close with Piglet being unmasked as none other than reality TV star and 98 Degrees co-founder Nick Lachey.
He beat out Chameleon (Wiz Khalifa) and Black Swan (JoJo), who put up a good fight only to fall to the Cincinnati Kid.
Billboard spoke with Lachey before his win to find out how he ended up covered in pork, why he approached the show like a Little League coach and what advice Dave Grohl gave him.
The clues seemed pretty obvious all along, with notes of being unlucky in love and the world seeing your heartbreak. Were you even trying to hide it?
I think it’s a fine line. You don’t know when the production crew are building the clue packages, especially in the beginning, it’s hard to know how obvious your voice is going to sound. As the season went on we tried to be more coy about it to throw people off. I had a feeling just because I’ve worked with everyone on some level on that judging panel that it was just a matter of time before they recognized my voice. We put some things in later about football to try and throw them off. I didn’t really look at it as, “hey I have to get through this whole season with nobody knowing who I am.” As a singer I just have to do what I do and if they figure it out.
Is it true that your kids said you should be a piglet on the show? I mean, as a fellow Cincinnatian, it felt pretty spot-on since our town was known as Porkopolis.
Ironically, they presented the pig costume to me and because I’m from Cincinnati — my production company is called Flying Pig Productions — and you know… Porkopolis… it just resonated with me from the beginning, like, “Hey, this is meant to be!” And then my wife, knowing that I was gonna do it, while I was away asked my kids what kind of costume I should have. I think my daughter said a goat or something and my son said, “he should be a pig.” And I said, “this is crazy, it’s definitely meant to be.” Of all the animals he could have pulled out of the hat it was a pig.
You said you were looking for a chance to be a “total idiot.” Did you succeed?
[Laughs]. I definitely tried to give the pig some life. I was talking to Joey Fatone who had done the first season and is a good buddy and he said, “Hey man, if you do this you have to give the character some personality and really go for it.” And that’s a big part of it. Performance is the crux of the show, but also giving the characters a life and personality is part of it as well.
It seemed like the costume allowed you to be way sillier than we’re used to. Was that how it felt?
Yeah, exactly. I tried to be as silly and ridiculous as I could. I was standing up there in a pig costume for Pete’s sake! You can’t take yourself too seriously in that in that moment.
Nicole said you seemed to want it the most. Did you go there to win? I’ve heard you’re a bit competitive.
I don’t like to go into anything planning to lose, but I also envision what I’m telling my son on the baseball field: as long as you’re giving your best effort daddy can never be mad at that. The outcome doesn’t matter as long as you’re giving your best. That’s how I looked at this, be what I tell my kids to be. Give it all I got, leave it all out there and then accept the result, don’t be a sore loser. I wanted to make it to the finals and then whatever outcome happens… the other thing about it is you don’t know who else is on the show and who you’re competing against. You don’t know if you’re the best singer out there, the worst singer out there. It’s really unique in that way.
The guesses were pretty close, but also kind of ridiculous: almost every member of Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC — but not 98 Degrees– most of the men from Twilight, Adam Lambert, Zayn, Adam Levine and, of course, you. Were you surprised?
Yeah, especially [the guesses] from Ken. “Where in the world are you getting this from?!” I just tried my hardest up there but you really have no clue so it’s got to be tough to be a judge on that show. But it’s a trip to be up there after a performance, sweating, hyperventilating and listening to them make these sometimes ridiculous guesses. You just want to sometimes take your mask off and be like, “what are you…??!?”
Your voice is so unmistakable. How quickly did you hear from your family, friends and bandmates after your first episode?
My grandma was like, “I think Nick might be doing this show,” and my mom called me and I was like, “I don’t know…” I had to play dumb, but when you perform with your brother on an almost daily basis for years and years he definitely picked up on that fact that it was me. Again, I worked with a lot of the panel. Robin Thick’s written songs for us and we know each other and I worked for two years on The Sing-Off with Nicole, I toured with the New Kids [On the Block] when Jenny was with Donnie… I didn’t necessarily think I was going to make it through the whole season without them knowing who I was.
This isn’t your first reality TV go-round. You produced MTV’s Taking the Stage about your alma mater here in Cincinnati, you mentioned The Sing-Off, you appeared on Drop the Mic and Dancing With the Stars. Was this the weirdest one of the bunch?
Dancing with the Stars was weird for me because I can’t dance, so it felt almost completely foreign. This was more comfortable because I felt like something I’m used to doing and feel like I can do. But performing in the costume was definitely the weirdest thing and the most challenging and, ultimately the most rewarding. Because you have to figure out a way to overcome those challenges the costume and mask present. There was a time early on when I wasn’t sure I could do it. It was really hard to sing and hard to breathe. I had an ice vest they gave me initially and I said lose the ice vest I can’t breathe in it, I’d rather be hot… it was almost like re-learning how to perform.
How fun was it to break out of the box and sing the Foo Fighters? And “Hallelujah” looked like about as much fun as I’ve seen you have onstage in years.
I grew up going to a performing arts school there in Cincy, we did opera and different stuff and this was a chance to show off a bit of range. Plus, you don’t want to go down the same lane the whole time, you want to show different sides of you voice… It was great to be able to go on stage every week and sing great songs by great artists and really try and stretch yourself. I thought if I had a chance of winning I had to prove I was more than just some balladeer that was just going to sing love songs… Dave Grohl and I know each other because our kids went to preschool together I called him up and said, “Hey I really want to sing ‘Pretender’ on the show, would you bless it?” And he said, “yeah, but you gotta kill it!”
It seemed like you got a bit choked up and got the judges misty too with your last performance of “Faithfully.” What was going through your mind?
I was really worried I wouldn’t be able to get through that song. You come to the end of the journey and you think about what we do as performers — we’re gone a lot and you can’t do that or a show like this without the support of your family — my family is everything to me, paramount in my life, so I was really concerned I’d be in the middle of that song and not be able to do it because it is an emotional song for me… The Lukas Graham song was another one that was very emotional for me because of my relationship with my son and my dad. Even if you’re in a pig costume it doesn’t change the crux of what that song is about.
It sounds like this is the kick-off of a summer of 98 Degrees?
Yeah, we’re doing this campaign [called] 98 Days of Summer that is going to lead toward a new single coming out on July 9th called “Where Do You Want To Go.” And we’ve got other new music we recorded and more music we’re going to record later this summer. We’ve also done a remix album of all the classic 98 hits. After a year of being on th shelf and not able to do anything we were anxious to get back together to record some new stuff and give our fans some new stuff to get excited about. We’ve got some shows confirmed for later this year and shows throughout the fall and we’ll definitely be touring through next year, as will every other artist! [laughs]
There’s a new male/female pairing atop Billboard’s Tropical Airplay chart, and both artists score their first No. 1 in almost five years.
Victor Manuelle and La India crown the list as “Víctimas Las Dos” rises 3-1 on the May 29-dated survey. It’s the first duet between a female and male soloist at No. 1 since March 2020, when Natti Natasha and Romeo Santos’ “La Mejor Versíon de Mi” had its final week atop the list.
“Víctimas Las Dos” lands atop the tally boosted by a 35% increase in audience impressions, to 4.8 million, earned in the week ending May 23, according to MRC Data. It ascends to No. 1 after spending 15 weeks in the chart’s top 10 (the song debuted at No. 15 on chart dated Feb. 27 and rose to No. 6 in its second week).
The song is the first collaborative effort by the Puerto Ricans. “’Víctimas’ was inspired by all those manipulative and lying men women come across daily and I thought La India was the perfect interpreter to give drama to the story. We are aware it’s a common issue,” Victor Manuelle tells Billboard.
As mentioned, the pair are the first male/female duo to lead Tropical Airplay in over a year. Natti Natasha and Romeo Santos last ruled with the 15-week champ “La Mejor Versión De Mi” (starting Oct. 26, 2019-March 21, 2020).
“It’s definitely an honor to reach No. 1 on Tropical Airplay,” La India tells Billboard. “Grateful to all radio stations and Billboard for its continuous support with our tropical genre.”
Thanks to the new champ, Manuelle collects his 29th No. 1, dating back to “Hay Que Poner El Alma” (six weeks, 1996), and extends his second-most No. 1 standing just behind Marc Anthony with 34. Between his trips to the summit, Manuelle has only ruled with one other female collaborative effort: “Por Ese Hombre,” with Brenda K. Starr and Tito Nieves.
“I have collaborated with various female singers throughout my career,” Victor remembers. “I have never measured the time between collaborations. They occur spontaneously and organically; I am not measuring the years or the time thinking that it is necessary at that moment. I knew that collaborating with La India, however, was very important for our genre.”
La India, meanwhile, secures her 11th leader, three of which have been via male collaborations. “It’s a privilege to work with Víctor Manuelle, our great youth sonero,” she adds. “To be part of his team was incredible. This powerful song was written by Víctor and was recorded with a lot of love. This divine encounter conveys a lot of feeling and passion and the video is like a musical soap-opera.”
Both salseros claim their best showing since 2016: Victor Manuelle previously achieved a No. 1 with “Imaginar,” with Yandel (July 2016). La India clocked her 10th leader just a month later with “Me Voy a Acostumbrar,” with Juan Gabriel, (August 2016).
“Víctimas” bursts 40-23 on the all-Latin genre Latin Airplay chart. Both acts rewrite their personal bests in over years there.
About the production of the song, Victor Manuelle muses: “It had to be a story that welcomed La India’s great strength and interpretation; a controversial theme females could identify themselves with. It was impressive to have her face to face in a recording studio and to hear how the idea that was in my mind was greatly exceeded. Due to the pandemic, we have only been able to sing it live together once. I hope we can perform it on various stages.”
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