In our weekly feature “THE WEEKLY,” music critic Seo Seongdeok takes stock of the biggest developments in the music industry each week. Catch up on the latest stories in music, from major artist moves to notable new releases, “Billboard” chart highlights, and more.
Taylor Swift rules the charts for the second week straight
“The Life of a Showgirl” has now spent 14 weeks at No. 1 on the “Billboard” 200. The album, a deluxe reissue with four new songs added on, reclaimed the top of the chart last week after nine months. With 15 albums to her name, Taylor Swift is now the second artist to hit the milestone of 100 total weeks at No. 1, and the only solo artist. Only the Beatles are ahead of her, at 132 weeks. The last time the band had a No. 1 was February 2001, when their greatest-hits album “1” earned an eighth week at the top.
“Showgirl” moved 93,000 units this week, down 46% from the previous. Streams slipped to No. 2, reaching 66.7 million, equivalent to 65,000 units. Sales rose from last week to 27,000 units, however, lifting the album from No. 5 to No. 2 on the Top Album Sales chart.
Swift’s new single “Patient Zero” held onto No. 1 for the second week in a row. Now 10 of her 16 No. 1s have spent two or more weeks at the top, the fourth artist to do so. Mariah Carey leads with 17, followed by the Beatles with 15 and Rihanna with 10. At No. 2 this week is once again “Choosin’ Texas” by Ella Langley. The song leads “Patient Zero” in streaming and radio, but it trails by a much wider margin when it comes to sales.
Meanwhile, the three other new songs from the deluxe edition of “The Life of a Showgirl,” which took Nos. 3 through 5 last week, slid into the 30s. That left an opening for two new songs to break into the Top 10. Drake and Don Toliver’s collab “Solar Eclipse” debuted at No. 5. The track is one of the new songs off the reissue of “HABIBTI,” the album Drake originally released in May. It’s also his 91st Top 10 hit, keeping him firmly at the top of the list. Finally, ADÉLA’s song “Nicole Kidman” climbed three spots to No. 9, finally cracking the Top 10.
Taylor Swift, Drake, and the Beatles come together
The top of this week’s “Billboard” 200 was a rare sight. With Taylor Swift at No. 1, Drake at No. 2, and the Beatles at No. 4, the three artists with the most No. 1 albums in chart history all shared the Top 5 together. The Beatles lead with 19 No. 1 albums, followed by Swift and Drake with 15 apiece. Two of the three have shared the Top 10 plenty of times, but this is a first.
Drake’s album “HABIBTI” rocketed from No. 116 last week to No. 2 on the strength of a reissue with four added songs, returning to its previous peak. It moved 71,000 units, up 506% for the week, mainly from streaming. The Beatles LP “Rubber Soul” returned to the chart and took No. 4 thanks to a major deluxe reissue. This is the album’s first reappearance in a decade, having spent six weeks at No. 1 back in 1966 and most recently charted again in January 2016. The tracklist includes classics like “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown),” “Michelle,” and “In My Life.” “Rubber Soul” moved 58,000 units, a week-over-week jump of 1,626%. Album sales accounted for 50,000 of that, sending it back to No. 1 on the Top Album Sales chart. It’s been the Beatles’ biggest week since the 2019 deluxe reissue of “Abbey Road,” which saw 81,000 total units, 70,000 from album sales.
The last spot in the Top 10 went to another reissue. “The Divine Feminine” by Mac Miller jumped from No. 159 to No. 10 with a deluxe edition with three bonus tracks marking the 10th anniversary. The album previously peaked at No. 2.
Is the four-song deluxe edition the new winning formula?
Over the course of two weeks, two of the biggest names in the world of music have gone with the same strategy for reissuing their albums. Taylor Swift added four songs to “The Life of a Showgirl” for “The Encore” version, and she dominated both the “Billboard” 200 and the Hot 100. Drake swept the Top 3 of the “Billboard” 200 in May with a trio of albums. At the time, “HABIBTI” was No. 2. Now, five months later, he’s added four songs to the album, and the expanded “FOMO” edition took No. 2 on the “Billboard” 200 and No. 1 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart.
Swift’s reissue is wildly different from the approach she’s taken to bonus tracks before. In 2022, the “3am Edition” of “Midnights” got a surprise drop three hours after the regular edition came out. The “3am” songs were written alongside the main album, a hidden half that was part of the plan from the start. She pulled a very similar move in 2024 with “The Anthology” edition of “The Tortured Poets Department”—15 additional songs on top of the regular album’s 16, released as a surprise two hours later.
With “The Life of a Showgirl,” though, Swift specifically announced there were no songs beyond the 12 already there. In fact, unlike her earlier albums, where she put different exclusives onto different editions, “Showgirl” only came with varying interpretations of the existing 12, such as acoustic versions. The bonus tracks on “The Encore” were reportedly written after the album first came out. Whether that goes against what she said about there being no extra songs is up to interpretation. The biggest difference is that one of those new songs was also released as a new lead single and climbed all the way to No. 1 on the Hot 100.
In Drake’s case, his reissue also seems to cast a light on the two albums that were somewhat overshadowed by the No. 1 “ICEMAN.” In September, he released a video called “FOMO” featuring new music videos for songs off “HABIBTI” and “MAID OF HONOUR,” along with nine new songs. It’s speculated that “HABIBTI (FOMO)” is only the first half of a bigger project.
The two artists reissued their albums under different circumstances, but their strategy is bound to be seen as a learning moment for the industry as a whole. Four songs is a meaningful amount of extra content without feeling like a flood. It could be just the shot in the arm a release needs at a time when they tend to come and go in the space of just a few weeks. It’s also less of a burden for artists than releasing one substantial single after another. It even resembles K-pop’s album-repackaging approach to some degree. Have Swift and Drake just come up with the new killer formula?