The BTS Army drove Jung Kook‘s first solo single, “Seven,” to No. 1 on the latest Billboard Hot 100 chart, a milestone previously reached by fellow member Jimin’s “Like Crazy” three months ago. With 21.9 million streams registered, 6.4 million airplay impressions audience and 153,000 singles sold, the track (which features rapper Latto as a guest artist) came out of the box as a certifiable monster.
Country star Jason Aldean doesn’t have a similar Army bolstering him, but does sound like he might be forming a militia in “Try That in a Small Town.” The deeply polarizing song was able to ride a wave of headlines to a No. 2 entry, after it’d spent the last two months not even cracking the lower ranks of the chart, prior to the controversy erupting.
On the Billboard 200 album chart, meanwhile, there was no competition for the second week of Taylor Swift‘s “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version),” which, even as a re-recording (mostly) of a 13-year-old release, looks to be a blockbuster with legs. It’s the first of her three Big Machine-era remakes thus far to top the album chart for two weeks, not just one.
Music news has been dominated in the last week by Aldean’s divisive song, which had been out since May without drawing much media attention until an even more provocative — and, many thought, disturbing — music video created a firestorm. Although the vigilante-themed song and video may make Aldean persona non grata in some quarters, his audience defended him and ate it up, consumption-wise, with massive increases in streams and downloads. It didn’t much budge on the country radio airplay chart. But the fervent support of much of the cultural right has made “Small Town,” at least for the moment, a certifiable on-demand smash.
“Try That in a Small Town” might even have had a shot at No. 1 on the Hot 100 if its notoriety hadn’t come almost entirely in the second half of the charting week, which closed Thursday. Aldean’s libs-baiting song had 11.6 million streams for the week, up a whopping 547%, and sold 228,000 downloads, an increase of an even more astonishing 27,625%. (Many fans of what Aldean was espousing made it clear they were buying the song on iTunes to make a statement of support for him and the track.)
With the paid track download market having slowed down to a trickle when politics aren’t involved, it wasn’t even that difficult for the Aldean tune to reach a benchmark not seen in a decade. The last time a country single sold more copies in a week was 10 years ago this month, when Florida Georgia Line and Nelly’s “Cruise” sold 244,000, according to Billboard.
“Small Town” also debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s Country Songs chart, where it hadn’t even been impacting, due to streams and downloads being weighted there. On the publication’s Country Airplay chart, though, it actually slipped one spot, to No. 26, despite a modest 17% increase to 6.5 million audience impressions. Country radio is much slower to respond to virality than streaming, of course, so it will be interesting to see whether the song does enjoy a big airplay boost on the next chart or whether programmers are iffy about alienating a portion of their listeners with increased play for a tune that has prompted discussions and debate about violence and even lynching.
The combined power of Jung Kook and Jason Aldean finally drove Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night” out of the No. 1 spot after a wild 14-week run there. Between the Aldean and Wallen tracks and Luke Combs’ “Fast Car” sitting at No. 4, country songs are achieving a rare feat in commanding three out of the four top positions on the Hot 100.
Swift’s album remained No. 1 for a second week even though it was down 83% from its debut frame, per Luminate. That premiere week was so big that even a steep decline for “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)” after its blockbuster bow still resulted in 121,000 album-equivalent units. Swift still has four albums in the top 10, as she did last week, when she became the first female artist to ever accomplish that feat.
There were no new entries in the top 10 of the album chart, which Billboard reports is a first in the last six months. Swift’s closest competition for top honors on the Billboard 200 was Wallen’s formerly chart-dominating “One Thing at a Time,” still going very strong with 105,000 album units.
