THE KELLY CLARKSON SHOW — Episode 1011 — Pictured: Ariana Grande — (Photo by: Weiss … [+] Eubanks/NBCUniversal/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images)
NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
Ariana Grande rules the Billboard charts this week–pretty much all of the most important ones, in fact. The singer’s new album Eternal Sunshine arrives at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, and as it launches in first place, the pop singer grabs a special record from one of the top rappers in the business.
Eternal Sunshine starts its time atop the Billboard 200 with 227,000 equivalent units shifted. That number is made up largely of streaming units, as Americans streamed Grande’s latest in huge sums.
Grande now claims the record for the largest debut of the year in America. Eternal Sunshine easily outpaces the previous record holder by a margin of tens of thousands of units.
Before Eternal Sunshine arrived, the largest debut atop the Billboard 200 so far in 2024 belonged to Kanye West–also known as Ye–and his collaborator Ty Dolla $ign. The two formed a superduo named ¥$. Their first set together, Vultures 1–one of three, supposedly–opened in first place on the chart with 148,000 equivalent units.
Eternal Sunshine is one of only three efforts to debut on the Billboard 200 with at least 100,000 units in one week, and it’s the first to hit 200,000 copies in one frame. In addition to Vultures 1, 21 Savage’s American Dream also opened atop the tally with 133,000 equivalent units shifted.
Grande earns the largest debut on the Billboard 200 since her friend Nicki Minaj returned in late 2023. The rapper’s Pink Friday 2 started at No. 1 with 228,000 equivalent units moved in its first frame.
While streaming sites like Spotify and Apple
AAPL
Music may have done most of the work in sending Eternal Sunshine to No. 1 on the Billboard 200, fans of the singer also purchased the title in healthy numbers as well. Grande’s new full-length sold more than 77,000 copies in its first tracking period. That makes it the bestselling title in the country by more than 50,000 purchases.
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