Rock band Mumford & Sons scores its second No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart, as its new release Wilder Mind debuts in the top slot. It moved 249,000 equivalent album units in the week ending May 10, according to Nielsen Music.
The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week based on multi-metric consumption, which includes traditional album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA).
Of Wilder Mind’s overall unit start, pure album sales equated to 231,000 — a drop off from the arrival of its last album, 2012’s Babel. It launched at No. 1 with a whopping 600,000 copies sold — a stanza that remains the largest sales week for a rock album this decade. Babel would spend a total of five nonconsecutive weeks at No. 1: Its first three frames, and then another two the following year after the set won the Grammy Award for album of the year. It’s sales-to-date stand at 2.7 million.
Babel’s big bow was partially driven by the slow-and-steady success of its predecessor, 2010’s No. 2-peaking Sigh No More. That album had sold 2.5 million copies by the time Babel was released and most certainly built-up the band’s fan base, which turned out in force for Babel’s first-week. (Sigh No More has sold a total of 3.2 million.)
That said, Wilder Mind does earn the largest sales week for a rock album in nearly year. Coldplay’s Ghost Stories was the last rock title to tally a bigger week when it arrived on the June 7, 2014-dated list at No. 1 with 383,000 sold. Wilder Mind also notches the third-largest sales week of 2015, behind the bows of Drake’s If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late (495,000) and Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly (324,000).
Wilder Mind — which is the quartet’s third full-length effort and was released May 4 through Gentlemen Of the Road/Glassnote Records — was led by the chart-topping single “Believe.” It reached No. 1 on both the Alternative Songs and Adult Alternative Songs chart.
In the runner-up slot on the latest Billboard 200, Josh Groban’s Stages holds steady for a second week, moving 101,000 units (down a moderate 44 percent). The album held fast at No. 2, perhaps because it was a prime Mother’s Day (May 10) gift purchase, and the holiday fell on the final day of the latest tracking week.
The new Now 54 compilation enters at No. 3 with 71,000 units, giving the long-running Now That’s What I Call Music! series its 60th top 10 album. All 54 of the numbered volumes in the Now franchise have reached the top 10, along with an additional six genre-specific titles (like Now That’s What I Call Christmas!).
Rapper Tech N9ne starts at No. 4 with his new album Special Effects, shifting 66,000 overall units and his biggest sales week yet: 58,000. The album equals the No. 4 peak of his two earlier highest-charting efforts: 2011’s All 6’s & 7’s and 2013’s Something Else. The latter title also previously logged Tech N9ne’s best sales frame with a handful of units less than Special Effects.
Last week’s No. 1 album, Zac Brown Band’s Jekyll + Hyde, falls to No. 5 in its second week, shifting 66,000 units (down 71 percent).
The Fifty Shades of Grey soundtrack gets a boost, as it collects a 46 percent unit gain to 53,000 units. The album holds at No. 6, despite its gain. The set’s overall unit total benefits from the home video release of its parent film on May 8.
The Furious 7 soundtrack slips 3-7 in its eighth week on the list (46,000 units; down 14 percent) while Sam Smith’s In the Lonely Hour is steady at No. 8 (39,000; up 17 percent). Taylor Swift’s 1989 is also a non-mover at No. 9 (just over 36,000; up 11 percent) and Ed Sheeran’s x rises 11-10 with 36,000 (up 19 percent). [Billboard]
