There's a new No. 1 album on this week's Billboard charts, and it's by Megadeth. There's a new No. 1 song, and it's by Harry Styles. Those goofy rascals were long overdue to appear in the same paragraph, and now their day has come.
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This week, Harry Styles' "Aperture" debuts atop the Hot 100, as the former One Direction star begins to roll out his perplexingly titled new album, Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally. Given that Styles' last record (2022's Harry's House) won the Grammy for album of the year — and spawned one of the decade's biggest hits with "As It Was" — there was bound to be a huge surge of fan interest in "Aperture."
The question is how well the song can sustain its first-week success, and early signs look good: It's the week's most-streamed track, and it debuts at No. 19 on the Radio Songs chart — the exact position at which "As It Was" entered the very same chart nearly four years ago. (That song ultimately stayed for 15 weeks at No. 1.) "Aperture" is more dance-oriented and less straightforwardly pop than "As It Was," though, and many colossal stars are slated to drop new albums in the next few months, so Styles will face loads of competition.
Over on the albums chart, a … different artist debuts at No. 1: Megadeth, the veteran metal band that's been churning out rugged, raging metal since it formed all the way back in 1983. The group's new, self-titled album — widely reported as its swan song — has just become the first-ever Megadeth album to top the Billboard 200.
If you're thinking, "Wow, that took a while," you're not wrong. Megadeth's chart career began when its second album (Peace Sells… But Who's Buying?) debuted at No. 118 in October 1986. If you haven't heard it — whaddya mean you haven't heard it? — you'd be forgiven if you stopped reading this long enough to stream "Peace Sells." It rules.
Peace Sells… But Who's Buying? was the first of 23 Megadeth records to ultimately crack the Billboard 200, but until this week, the band had only climbed as high as No. 2, with 1992's Countdown to Extinction. The time it took for a Megadeth album to hit No. 1 since the band first landed on the chart: just a little more than 39 years.
It took a fair bit of timing, good fortune and hard work to get Megadeth to No. 1: This was a slow week for new music, a new documentary (Megadeth: Behind the Mask) just dropped and the new album was released with both a Target-exclusive CD edition and more than a dozen different vinyl versions. Still, No. 1 is No. 1, and now, Megadeth is a chart-topper forevermore. Topping the charts is Megadeth's business … and business is good!
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Megadeth's reign at No. 1 is almost certain to be one-and-done; virtually all of its numbers are derived from sales, which don't carry over from week to week. Plus, next week's charts are likely to be heavily influenced by Sunday's Grammy Awards, which ought to provide a boost to the night's biggest winners (Bad Bunny, Kendrick Lamar, Olivia Dean) and flashiest performers (Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, Sabrina Carpenter, Dean again).
In the meantime, the top 10 is loaded with old reliables (Morgan Wallen's I'm the Problem, Taylor Swift's The Life of a Showgirl, SZA's SOS, et al) and recent debuts that are still basking in their newness (Zach Bryan's With Heaven on Top, A$AP Rocky's Don't Be Dumb, YoungBoy Never Broke Again's Slime Cry). If you're looking for an album with serious momentum, though, consider Dean's The Art of Loving, which climbs from No. 7 to No. 3 and is about to get a lift from her best new artist Grammy on Sunday. She seems well-positioned to stick around in the top 10 for a good long time, even as an onslaught of A-listers (J. Cole, Bruno Mars, Harry Styles, BTS, Luke Combs and more) looms.
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With Harry Styles debuting at No. 1, it's easy to miss the momentum of the songs just beneath it on the Hot 100. This week, country singer Ella Langley jumps to a new career peak at No. 2, as "Choosin' Texas" appears to be breaking out beyond country radio. (It's been No. 1 on Billboard's Hot Country Songs for 10 weeks now.)
The performance of "Choosin' Texas" is especially impressive, given that it leapfrogs Olivia Dean's "Man I Need" the same week that song finally ascends to No. 1 on the Radio Songs chart. Those two tracks look primed to duke it out for chart supremacy for a long time to come, with Dean likely to reclaim the upper hand in the aftermath of the Grammys.
Incidentally, "Man I Need" hitting No. 1 on Radio Songs means that Alex Warren's "Ordinary" is not No. 1 on Radio Songs — which is itself fairly newsworthy at this point. "Ordinary" topped that chart for 27 soul-cleaving weeks, tying it for the all-time record with Shaboozey's "A Bar Song (Tipsy)." We're getting ever-closer to being free of "Ordinary," at least as far as the charts are concerned; it dips to No. 7 on this week's Hot 100 and may soon run afoul of Billboard's rules about removing songs from the Hot 100 once they've logged a certain number of weeks and begun to decline.
Finally, one song experiences a drop that would appear to be at least somewhat temporary. Bruno Mars' "I Just Might," which spent its first two weeks on the Hot 100 at No. 1, slips to No. 6 this week. That might seem steep, but its streaming numbers remain solid and it always takes a while for commercial radio stations to defrost their playlists and add new hits. With Mars performing the song on Sunday's Grammys telecast — and his album The Romantic awaiting release on Feb. 27 — "I Just Might" looks decently likely to find its footing and bounce back.
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