Rolling Stone USA - 04.2020

The Mix

Justin Bieber’s Quiet Storm

This list ranks the top RS 200 debuts from June 21st, 2019,

through March 2nd, 2020, and is ranked by album units, a

number that combines on-demand audio streams, album

sales, and song sales using a custom weighting system.

CHARTS

THE BIGGEST ARTISTS,

ALBUMS, AND SONGS

OF TODAY

Harry’s Doing Just ‘Fine’

Harry Styles and Justin Bieber have a

lot in common: Both started as teen

pop stars, and each has held on to a

substantial fan base as he’s matured.

Musically, though, they’ve taken very dif-

ferent paths, as heard on Styles’ Laurel

Canyon-ish Fine Line. It’s one of three

albums in RS 200 history to move more

than 500,000 units in its first week.

‘Changes’ by the Numbers

Despite Bieber’s calculated campaign

to have his fans stream his songs on

loop to boost chart rankings, Changes

didn’t stream as well as it sold. While it

debuted atop the RS 200, it did so with

about 60 percent of its first-week units

coming from sales — and lost out to A

Boogie Wit Da Hoodie’s Artist 2.0 as the

most-streamed album of the week.

You and What Army?

There’s a reason they call them fan

armies, and when it comes to K-pop,

fans are as loyal and disciplined as Ma-

rines. Thanks to a massive fan campaign,

SuperM’s The 1st Mini Album took over

U.S. charts, topping R&B rising star Sum-

mer Walker for the gold. Despite being

just five tracks long, it became the first

K-pop album to top the RS 200.

BIEBER’S BACK Changes saw more than
125,000 sales and 122 million streams in
its first week on the RS 200.

IN 2015, JUSTIN BIEBER was at the top of his
game. Purpose, the album he released that year,
was a major blockbuster, putting up first-week
sales and streaming numbers that easily outpaced those
of Drake’s If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late and Kendrick
Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly. Over on the singles side, hits
such as “Where Are Ü Now” and “Sorry” went far by working
clever variations on the EDM-pop sound that dominated the
airwaves at the time.
When Bieber returned this February after four years away,
he stepped into a very different world. Since the release of

Purpose, streaming has transformed the music industry, mak-

ing hip-hop the most popular genre in the U.S. and globaliz-

ing the mainstream with hits from Latin America and South

Korea. Bieber has grown, too, giving up his tabloid bad-boy

days and marrying his girlfriend, Hailey Baldwin.

His new album, Changes, channels that mood into soft-

spoken R&B with no pop-radio hits to speak of. Its first-week

performance was accordingly low-key, debuting with about

one-third the units that Purpose saw in its first week. Below,

see how Changes stacks up among the top debuts in the his-

tory of the RS 200, which launched last June. EMILY BLAKE

Purpose

2015

667K First-week

numbers for

Purpose and

Changes by

album units.

Changes

2020

232.7K

AUDIO

STREAMS

39%

SONG

SALES

2%

ALBUM

SALES

59%

232.7K

JOE TERMINI

32 | Rolling Stone | April 2020

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

10

Taylor Swift

Lover

Harry Styles

Fine Line

Post Malone

Hollywood’s

Bleeding

Eminem

Music to Be

Murdered By

Kanye West

Jesus Is King

Tool

Fear Inoculum

Justin Bieber

Changes

BTS

Map of the Soul: 7

JackBoys feat. Travis Scott

JackBoys

SuperM

The 1st Mini Album

991.8K

510.1K

500.3K

281.6K

269.3K

248.3K

232.7K

218.0K

167.2K

165.7K

Top RS 200 Debuts

ALBUM UNITS