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