Carrie Underwood Lands Fifth No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Album Sales Chart With ‘My Savior’

Carrie Underwood achieves her fifth No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart, as My Savior opens at No. 1 (chart dated April 10).

My Savior was released on March 26 via Capitol Nashville/Universal Music Group Nashville and sold 68,000 copies in the U.S. in the week ending April 4 – the second-biggest sales week of 2021, and the largest for an album by a female artist this year. The year’s only larger sales week was registered by the debut frame of Morgan Wallen’s Dangerous: The Double Album (74,000 copies; chart dated Jan. 23).

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.

Of My Savior’s debut sales of 68,000, physical album sales comprise 43,000 of that figure (all in CDs) while digital album sales comprise 25,000. The CD was a strong performer with Internet and mail-order sellers (like Amazon) and mass merchants (Target, Walmart, etc.). Unlike a number of albums that have posted sturdy debut-week sales figures in recent times, My Savior’s first-week did not benefit from the availability of a vinyl LP. Instead, its vinyl edition will be released on April 30.

My Savior also debuts at No. 1 on the Top Christian Albums and Top Country Albums chart, and at No. 4 on the all-genre Billboard 200. It’s her second No. 1 on Top Christian Albums, following last year’s My Gift (her first Christmas record) and her ninth consecutive leader on Top Country Albums (the entirety of her charting albums). Underwood leads a busy top 10 on Top Album Sales, as its one of six albums that debut in the region.

NF’s Clouds (The Mixtape) bows at No. 2 with 58,000 – the biggest sales week of 2021 for an R&B/hip-hop album. Clouds’ sales were aided by a signed CD edition that was sold via NF’s official webstore.

Evanescence’s The Bitter Truth launches at No. 3 on Top Album Sales with 26,000 copies sold – and is the week’s top-selling rock album. The Bitter Truth also bows at No. 1 on Tastemaker Albums, which ranks the top-selling albums of the week at independent and small chain record stores. The set sold 6,000 copies through those retailers across all formats (CD and vinyl LP).

AJR’s OK Orchestra starts at No. 4 on Top Album Sales with 13,000 sold, while Justin Bieber’s Justice falls 2-5 in its second week with 10,000 sold (down 68%).

Neil Young’s live album Young Shakespeare debuts at No. 6 on Top Album Sales with nearly 10,000 copies sold. The set captures a Jan. 22, 1971 performance at The Shakespeare Theater in Stratford, Conn., and was not publicly available until this release. Young Shakespeare sold 5,000 copies on vinyl, enabling its No. 3 debut on the Vinyl Albums sales chart.

Lana Del Rey’s Chemtrails Over the Country Club falls 1-7 in its second week with 9,000 sold (down 84%), Taylor Swift’s former leader Folklore dips 6-8 with 6,500 (down 33%) and Billie Eilish’s previous No. 1 When We All Fall Asleep Where Do We Go? is a non-mover at No. 9 with a little over 6,000 (down 16%).

Closing out the top 10 is the self-titled debut from Smith/Kotzen – rock veterans Adrian Smith and Richie Kotzen. The set starts with 6,000 sold.

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Banda Los Recoditos Claims 18th Regional Mexican Airplay Top 10 With ‘Ponle Que Sí’

Banda Los Recoditos adds another top 10 to its collection on Billboard’s Regional Mexican Airplay chart with “Ponle Que Sí.”

As “Ponle Que Sí” lifts 13-10 (list dated April 10), the band scores its fourth straight top 10 and adds its 18th total Regional Mexican Airplay top 10 over the history of the chart, which began in 1985, a merit it now shares with Banda Carnaval. Los Tigres del Norte continues at the top with a massive 44 career top 10s.

“Ponle” ascends with an 11% gain in audience impressions, to 3 million, earned in the week ending April 4, according to MRC Data, which also yields to a 37-34 jump on the all-Latin format Latin Airplay chart.

“Ponle” follows “Para Que Me La Diste,” with Grupo Codiciado (No. 4 peak, Nov 20). The band’s first top 10 streak dates back to “Ando Bien Pedo,” the 12-week leader in 2010.

In all, out of Banda Los Recodito’s 18 total top 10s, five have hit No. 1.

“Ponle” was produced by Alfonso and Joel Lizárraga and released Feb. 26 on El Recodo/Fonovisa/UMLE.

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Mon Laferte’s ‘La Mujer’ Takes On a Whole New Meaning in New Gloria Trevi-Assisted Version

Mon Laferte’s “La Mujer” takes on a whole new meaning thanks to fresh lyrics and a dream collaboration with Gloria Trevi.

“The song is more powerful now,” says the Chilean singer-songwriter. “It needed fresh air and I thought, I wanted to sing with another powerful woman and, well, the first one that came to mind was Gloria.”

The change in the lyrics is subtle but poignant. It went from “I am that woman of the overdose. I am that woman that you know so well” to “I am that woman. I am your overdose. I am that woman that you know nothing about.”

“It’s a song I wrote years ago and had stopped singing because I didn’t like the lyrics anymore. It was toxic,” says Laferte. “But since the pandemic paused many things, I had the time to revisit the song and rewrite certain parts for the new album.”

After reaching out to Trevi, the Mexican star kept it honest. “First, I thought, great because I love her work. Mon is transparent and brave,” the “Pelo Suelto” singer tells Billboard. “But I am also an artist that has to be honest and transparent with the music that I sing so I needed to hear the song first in order to say yes. When I heard the lyrics, I thought ‘Wow.’ I thought, ‘I am that woman.’ I identified.”  

Laferte also talked about collaborating with Trevi, an artist whose inspired her music and writing. “I used to sing her songs when I was little, and I was known as Gloria’s double at our school because I was the one with the personality that could get away with impersonating her. I wore my ripped tights, would dance with my hair almost sweeping the floor,” Laferte shares.

Adding, “I tell Gloria that she has inspired a lot the way I write my songs because they come from an honesty that I learned and found in her songs because as she says, she’s an open book, and that’s how I write my songs too. I’m not telling fictional stories bur rather my life is in each song.”

The new version, which premiered Wednesday (April 7), lands on Laferte’s sixth studio album, aptly titled Seis, out Thursday. On it, the 37-year-old singer pairs honest, vulnerable and commanding lyrics with corrido tumbado, banda and mariacheño sounds.

Above, watch the highlights from our interview with the pair, where Trevi explains why she said yes to collaborating with Laferte and why both think the label “female empowerment” has turned into a cliché.

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Koryn Hawthorne Scores Second Gospel Airplay No. 1 With ‘Speak to Me’

Koryn Hawthorne achieves her second No. 1 on Billboard’s Gospel Airplay chart, as “Speak to Me” tops the tally dated April 10. In the week ending April 4, the single gained by 6% in plays, according to MRC Data.

The coronation follows the song’s 19-week reign on the airplay-, sales- and streaming-based Hot Gospel Songs chart, where it first led in November.

“Won’t He Do It,” the 23-year-old’s debut single, ruled Gospel Airplay for 19 weeks starting in April 2018. It dominated Hot Gospel Songs for 41 weeks beginning in March 2018, the chart’s longest command by a female artist.

“Wow, honestly after coming from such a huge record like ‘Won’t He Do It,’ releasing new music was super-scary for me,” Hawthorne tells Billboard. “I was afraid people would only connect to the one song, but I’m so grateful to have another record that resonates with so many people, especially in a time like this. ‘Speak to Me’ is special, so thank you to my team and thank you to all of my supporters. And last but definitely not least, thank you God.”

“Speak to Me” was co-written by Johntá Austin, Jeremy Hicks and Troy Taylor. It samples gospel icon Donnie McClurkin’s 1996 single “Speak to My Heart.”

Hawthorne, who was a finalist on the eighth season of NBC’s The Voice in 2015, has charted another Gospel Airplay entry, as “Unstoppable” reached No. 5 in June 2019, in between her two No. 1s.

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Republic Records Forms New Arab Music-Focused Label With The Weeknd Manager Sal Slaiby

Universal Music Group’s Republic Records and The Weeknd manager Wassim “Sal” Slaiby are joining forces to launch a Middle Eastern music record label.

The new label, to be named Universal Arabic Music, will focus on discovering and championing artists and sounds from the Middle East and North Africa, a region with vast potential as a music market, based on its population of about 500 million, that has traditionally been plagued by rampant piracy.

Slaiby, who has been pushing on other fronts to boost the profile of Middle Eastern music, founded the new label and will serve as CEO. “It’s been my dream to highlight the talent and culture of Arabic music on a global level with partners that I trust and admire,” he said in a press release.

The label, unveiled on Tuesday by Slaiby, UMG Chairman and CEO Lucian Grainge and Republic Records founder and CEO Monte Lipman, will seek to give Middle Eastern music — both from the region and from the diaspora around the world — a more global platform to reach the widest possible audience.

Slaiby, a refugee or the Lebanese Civil War who immigrated to Canada at 15, has dramatically raised his profile in the music industry in the past few years. In addition to managing The Weeknd, who had the top song on the Billboard Hot 100 last year with “Blinding Lights,” he also manages Moroccan-born French Montana, Doja Cat and several other artists, producers and songwriters.

The new label is building a team of experts who speak Arabic and have a deep understanding of Arabic music and culture, the partners say. The team will work alongside UMG’s labels in the U.S., U.K., Brazil, France, Germany, Australia, Mexico — as well as with UMG’s existing operations in the MENA region.

The global audience for Arabic music is growing rapidly, in part due to its rising popularity across social media channels and among the large Arabic diasporas around the world.

Social media is helping to build awareness of new Arabic artists and songs in the U.S., Brazil, France, Turkey and across Latin America, where there are large Arabic communities, Universal says. Brazil, for example, has the highest concentration of Arabs outside the Middle East, with an estimated 15 million Brazilians of Arab ancestry, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics.

“The cultural importance of music from the MENA region crossing boundaries and reaching all corners of the world is long overdue,” Republic’s Lipman said in a press release.

The Middle East and North Africa region, ranked 29th in the world, grew by 38% last year in total recorded music revenues, to $63.4 million, according to IFPI. Of that, streaming represented 93% of the total.

The new label could also help address a supply and demand issue that industry executives in the Middle East have recently highlighted. While consumers in the region have shown a strong preference for consuming Arabic-language music, only a tiny percentage of songs on music streaming platforms like Anghami, which recently went public on the Nasdaq, are actually Arab music.

Anghami co-founder Eddy Maroun told Billboard last month that of the streamer’s 57 million songs, only 1% is Arab music, even though 50% of the music consumed on the platform is Arabic-language music. “We need to create more content,” Maroun said.

As part of its launch on Tuesday, Universal Arab Music said it had signed 17-year-old Jordanian singer-songwriter Issam Alnajjar, whose debut single “Hadel Ahbek” drew over 3 billion views on TikTok and peaked at No. 14 on Billboard’s World Digital Song Sales chart. The song has also topped Spotify’s Viral Global and U.S. Charts and Shazam’s Top 200 Global Chart, Universal says.

Slaiby also discovered and developed 19-year-old Palestinian-Chilean singer/songwriter Elyanna, who first gained traction after posting covers on Soundcloud. Last year, the now California-based singer released her self-titled debut EP and breakout hit “Ana Lahale” featuring Canadian-Lebanese artist Massari. (Elyanna signed to indie label Empire last year.)

Slaiby, who lives in Los Angeles, also serves as head of international partnerships for Anghami, which is based in Abu Dhabi. The new Arab label’s music will be available on all the streaming services available to other UMG labels, a Universal spokesperson says.

Like other major labels, Universal has been pushing deeper into the MENA region in the past few years. Universal’s regional headquarters is in Dubai, and the label opened an office in Morocco last year to expand its North African footprint.

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