Pop star Olivia Rodrigo stays No.1 with Sour
Last week, singer Olivia Rodrigo walked into the White House with the No.1 album in the country. This week, having made her pitch to get young people vaccinated, she is still on top.
Sour, the debut album by the 18-yearold pop star and actress, earned its fourth week at No.1 since its release in May — and its first back-to-back performance atop the Billboard 200 — thanks in part to a slow week of releases. No new album appears in the Top 10 for the first time in two months, according to Billboard, after a flurry of major releases seemed to signal a return for the music business following a year-and-a-half of pandemic strictures.
The numbers for Sour were down slightly from last week, with the equivalent of 83,000 in sales — including 102 million streams — according to MRC Data, Billboard’s tracking arm. A first album by a woman has not topped the chart for four weeks since I Dreamed A Dream by Susan Boyle of Britain’s Got Talent in 2009 and 2010, Billboard said.
Outside of her chart dominance, Rodrigo reached a different audience on Wednesday, when she attended a White House briefing, toured the West Wing with Dr Anthony Fauci, and made a series of educational videos with President Joe Biden — all to the befuddlement of some culturally incurious members of the political press.
The rest of the Billboard Top 5 is made up of familiar faces: Doja Cat’s Planet Her remains at No.2, where it has sat for the three weeks since its release, with 61,000 equivalent albums; Morgan Wallen’s Dangerous: The Double Album,
which spent 10 weeks at No.1, is No.3; The Voice Of The Heroes, a one-time chart-topper by Lil Baby and Lil Durk is No.4; and Polo G’s Hall Of Fame,
another former No.1, is currently No.5.
On the singles chart, the Hot 100, K-pop group BTS replaced itself at No.1 with a new song, Permission To Dance (written in part by Ed Sheeran), after seven straight weeks on top with Butter.
That swap let Rodrigo hang on to the longest run at No.1 this year, as Drivers License spent eight weeks there from January to March.