Album Chart Gets a Refresh With Lil Durk, Ghost Taking the Two Top Spots

variety.com:

Chris Willman Music WriterThe recently stagnant album chart got a big refresh this week, as new albums counted for four of the top 10 albums in the new Billboard 200, with Lil Durk’s “7220” riding atop the crop with one of the biggest debuts of 2022 so far.Also debuting in the top 10 are Ghost’s “Impera” at No.

2, Rex Orange County’s “Who Cares” at No. 5 and For King & Country’s “What Are We Waiting For?” at No. 7. (Yes, it’s a big week for question marks on the album chart.)On the Billboard Hot 100, meanwhile, Glass Animals’ “Heat Wave” continues its post-“Bruno” reign, enjoying its third week at the top.Lil Durk’s 120,500 album-equivalent units were good enough for the rapper to claim the third-biggest bow of the young year, bettered by only the first weeks for the new Gunna and Weeknd albums back in January.

The rock band Ghost may have had to settle for No. 2 on the Billboard 200, but it was tops among actual album sales, by far.

Fans bought 62,500 copies of the album in traditional physical or digital sales, a more than substantial part of its overall 70,000 album-equivalent units.On-demand streams for Ghost stood at 9.11 million — a big figure for a rock unit these days, if only a fraction of the 164.81 million streams for Gunna.