Black Friday sends Taylor Swift back to the top of the charts
Holiday staples and Kendrick Lamar's GNX are still storming this week's Billboard charts, as they combine to lock down eight of the week's Top 10 songs. But the holiday that's had the greatest impact on this week's Billboard 200 albums chart isn't Christmas, but Black Friday. That's because a single Black Friday title — Taylor Swift's Target-exclusive physical editions of The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology — has sent TTPD soaring back to the top of the Billboard 200 for a 16th nonconsecutive week, nearly eight months after its initial release.
TOP ALBUMS
Last week, Kendrick Lamarposted a decisive No. 1 debut following the surprise release of his new album, GNX. The album was a blockbuster right out of the gate, with streaming numbers so strong he wound up landing seven of the week's Top 10 singles — including the entire Top 5 — all by himself, with little help from sales or radio airplay. It was the kind of performance that portends a long run at the top of the charts, as streaming tends to beget more streaming.
One week later, as anticipated in this space, he's already been knocked out of the top spot. Taylor Swift seized on the season's second-most-lucrative holiday, Black Friday, and soared from No. 8 to No. 1 thanks to the first-ever physical release of The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology — that's the epic version of Swift's album that extended its track list from 16 to 31 songs. If you wanted a copy of the full 31-song set on vinyl or CD, you couldn't get it until Black Friday, and you could only score a copy at Target.
This, as with most things Taylor Swift has touched this side of the Cats movie, proved to be a massive success: The album registered 405,000 "equivalent album units" — Billboard's metric for the cocktail of sales and streaming that informs its Billboard 200 rankings — which blows past even the blockbuster number (319,000) posted by Lamar's GNX last week. With her $2 billion Eras Tour closing this past Sunday, Swift's victory lap now includes a 16th nonconsecutive week at the top of the charts for the year's biggest album.
Unsurprisingly, GNX slips only a single spot, to No. 2 — and that album is hardly struggling, given that three of its songs remain in the Top 10. (More on that below.) And, speaking of juggernauts, the Wicked soundtrack also slips just one spot, from No. 2 to No. 3.
Juice WRLD debuts at No. 4 with The Party Never Ends; that album is the late rapper's third release to debut in the Top 5 since his death in 2019. (All six of Juice WRLD's albums have hit the Top 5, and fully half of them have come out posthumously.) And, speaking of posthumous returns to the Top 10, Bing Crosby has just registered his first Top 10 album in 64 years: A new compilation called Ultimate Christmas, which assembles some of the legendary singer's best-loved holiday music, jumps from No. 18 to No. 9.
Rounding out the Top 10, Sabrina Carpenter's Short n' Sweet dips from No. 3 to No. 5, Billie Eilish's Hit Me Hard and Soft slides from No. 5 to No. 6, and Michael Bublé's Christmas re-enters the Top 10, climbing from No. 12 to No. 7. Chappell Roan's The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess rises from No. 10 to No. 8, while Tyler, The Creator's CHROMAKOPIA tumbles from No. 4 to No. 10.
TOP SONGS
If you've grown weary of Mariah Carey's 1994 holiday staple "All I Want for Christmas Is You," take a deep breath. Because it's back in a big way, soaring from last week's spot at No. 10 — a chart figure deflated by the seven new Kendrick Lamar songs that debuted above it — all the way to No. 1. It's the song's sixth straight year hitting No. 1, which is a record, to say the least. (Only one other song has even two distinct stays atop the chart in different years: Chubby Checker's "The Twist," which hit No. 1 in 1960 and 1962.)
The songs that seem likeliest to challenge Carey's reign in the weeks to come, Brenda Lee's "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" and Wham!'s "Last Christmas," rise to No. 2 and No. 3 from No. 15 and No. 18, respectively. The Wham! song, in particular, seems to have generated a bit of momentum — it's the track's 40th anniversary this year, and No. 3 marks its new all-time chart peak — so it's not out of the question that it could displace "All I Want for Christmas Is You" at some point this season, as Brenda Lee did for a few weeks last year.
Three of Lamar's songs are still rattling around in the Top 10, as "TV Off (feat. Lefty Gunplay)" slips from No. 2 to No. 4, "Luther (feat. SZA)" slides from No. 3 to No. 6, and "Squabble Up" tumbles from No. 1 to No. 7. Given the sheer force of the holiday surge, that's awfully impressive. And, speaking of the holiday surge, Bobby Helms' indestructible "Jingle Bell Rock" — I should know, I've tried to kill the song myself — bounds from No. 19 to No. 5, while Burl Ives' "Holly Jolly Christmas" leaps from No. 33 to No. 10.
Two old reliables are still hanging in there, too, as Shaboozey's "A Bar Song (Tipsy)" — which remains tied for an all-time record 19 nonconsecutive weeks at No. 1 — dips from No. 6 to No. 8, and Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars' "Die With a Smile" slides from No. 7 to No. 9.
WORTH NOTING
One of the year's biggest chart-adjacent stories has revolved around Shaboozey's quest for the all-time longest run at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 — which, as noted above, has stalled out at 19 weeks, which ties the record set by Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road (feat. Billy Ray Cyrus)" in 2019. Both runs are remarkable, but they also speak to how dramatically the Billboard charts have changed in the streaming era. Both songs have been hugely popular by any metric, but few would argue that they're the two biggest singles in the history of the charts, you know?
Either way, it's virtually inevitable that they're about to be left in the dust, most likely sometime in late 2025 — and it's not out of the question that the all-time record could wind up virtually out of reach, and sooner than you might think.
This week, as chronicled above, Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You" returns to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for the sixth straight year. But that only takes us back to 2019; before that, the 1994 track spent plenty of time on the charts, reaching as high as No. 3, but it never topped the Hot 100 outright until five years ago. (Holiday songs typically didn't.)
This week marks the 15th week at No. 1 for "All I Want for Christmas Is You," following several multi-week runs in the top spot from 2019 to 2023. In 2023, the track shared the holiday season with "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree," which rode a surge of TikTok placements and a new official video to three weeks atop the Hot 100. (Naturally, "All I Want for Christmas Is You" spent all three of those weeks at No. 2.)
After this week, there are three more Hot 100 charts that are sure to be flooded with holiday songs — and which recent chart history suggests will be topped by either "All I Want for Christmas Is You," "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" or this year's dark horse, "Last Christmas." If Carey tops all three of them, which so far feels likely, that will extend her nonconsecutive run at No. 1 to 18 weeks — one short of the all-time record held by Shaboozey and Lil Nas X.
Around this time next year, though, all bets are off. And by 2026 or 2027, we could be looking at a record that looks basically untouchable, no matter how much streaming algorithms extend the life spans of our hit songs.
