The Weeknd earns a second week at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart as Beauty Behind the Madness continues to reign as the most popular album in the U.S. The set shifted another 145,000 equivalent album units in the week ending Sept. 10, according to Nielsen Music (down 65 percent). A week ago, the album bounded into the top slot with 411,000 units.
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). The new Sept. 26-dated chart (where The Weeknd is No. 1) will be posted in full to Billboard’s websites on Tuesday, Sept. 15.
Rock band Five Finger Death Punch charts its third consecutive No. 2 album with the debut of Got Your Six, which enters with 119,000 units. That sum is powered by 114,000 in pure album sales, which makes it the top selling album of the week, and it reigns at No. 1 on the Top Album Sales chart. That 114,000 figure is also the group’s best sales week ever, surpassing the 112,000 launch of 2013’s No. 2-peaking The Wrong Side of Heaven and the Righteous Side of Hell: Volume 1.
Got Your Six also enters at No. 1 on the Top Rock Albums and Hard Rock Albums charts — their third straight leader on both lists.
The Weeknd’s Beauty Behind the Madness is No. 2 on the Top Album Sales chart with 77,000 copies sold.
Back on the Billboard 200, rapper Travi$ Scott starts at No. 3 with his debut studio album Rodeo (85,000 units, of which 70,000 are pure album sales). It also starts at No. 1 on the Rap Albums chart, and No. 2 on Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums (behind The Weeknd).
Veteran rock band Iron Maiden debuts at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 with their new studio effort The Book of Souls (75,000 units). That equals their highest rank ever, first achieved in 2010 with The Final Frontier’s debut and peak at No. 4.
The new album also debuts with 74,000 albums sold, which is the group’s best sales week since Nielsen Music started tracking sales in 1991.
Also notable: The Book of Souls is the sixth straight Iron Maiden studio album to show debut week sales growth. Their steady climb started with 1998’s Virtual XI(10,000 sales debut, up from the 6,000 of 1995’s X Factor) and then continued on with 2000’s Brave New World (38,000), 2003’s Dance of Death (40,000), 2006’s A Matter of Life and Death (56,000), 2010’s The Final Frontier (63,000) and now its new album.
Troye Sivan claims his second straight Top 5 album, as his second EP, Wild, bows at No. 5 (50,000 units; 45,000 from album sales). It follows his debut EP, TRXYE, which debuted and peaked at No. 5 on the Aug. 30, 2014-dated chart (30,000).
Wild’s debut was powered largely by digital sales, with 43,000 of its sales sum coming from downloads. The EP also starts at No. 4 on the Digital Albums chart.
Luke Bryan’s former No. 1 album Kill the Lights slips 3-6 with 45,000 units (down 11 percent) and Taylor Swift’s 1989 dips 4-7 with 43,000 units (down 2 percent). Halsey’s Badlands falls 2-8 with 35,000 (down 69 percent) and Ed Sheeran’s Xdescends 6-9 with 27,000 (down 6 percent). Future’s DS2 closes out the Top 10, up one rung to No. 10, with 25,000 units (down 4 percent).
