Drake’s ‘Certified Lover Boy’ Opens With Biggest Week Of The Year

Drake has entertained fans with a new album all year and has previously said that his name will be “Certified Lover Boy.” It was sure to be a hit, but how big is it? For Drake, a giant of the streaming era – during the past week against Kanye West – the stakes were high.

Now the answer is clear: “Certified Lover Boy” is a blockbuster and dwarfs everything else released this year, but as a streaming phenomenon it fell slightly behind Drake’s own record.

In its first week, Drake’s album peaked at #1 on the Billboard chart with the equivalent of 613,000 sales in the United States, according to MRC Data. This is Taylor Swift’s “FolkloreIt had 846,000 in July 2020, before a change in Billboard’s charting rules disqualified most retail packs, such as giving fans the right to download with a T-shirt sale – highly effective but controversial sales strategy.

Drake’s great strength is in streaming, and “Certified Lover Boy” did not disappoint. In its first week, the album’s 21 songs reached 744 million streams in the United States – roughly 74,000 per minute – more than any other song. information technology Breaks Spotify’s record for the most streams in a single day; During the week, songs from “Certified Lover Boy” took 19 of the service’s top 25 charts. (West’s “in the frostIt opened with the equivalent of 309,000 sales, of which 357 million streams.)

However, “Certified Lover Boy” didn’t quite match the 2018 release performance of Drake’s last real studio album, “Scorpion.” In the first week of her debut, “ScorpionIt received 746 million clicks. Minor details of the graphic composition show that “Certified Lover Boy” is not as close to this record as it might seem. When “Scorpion” came out, Billboard only counted audio streams; Incorporated in 2020 both audio and video clicks. According to Billboard, 744 million streams total for “Certified Lover Boy,” almost 29 million for videos.

West’s “Donda” top of last week, fell 54 percent to second place with the equivalent of 141,000 sales.

Also this week, veteran British heavy metal band Iron Maiden took the highest chart position ever with “Senjutsu”, which opened at #3 – with just 3.6 million streams, but selling 61,000 copies as a full package. The band’s last two studio albums, “Book of Souls” (2015) and “final frontier” (2010), each went to number 4. (And 1980s classics “power slave” and “Somewhere in Time”? They never broke the top 10.)

Olivia Rodrigo’s “Sour” is number 4 and Doja Cat’s “Planet Her” is number 5.