Stray Kids claim the biggest album in America this week, and that feat isn’t unusual for them. In fact, it’s becoming a common sight to watch as the latest release from one of the biggest names in K-pop debuts atop a number of Billboard charts.
The boy band’s just-released set, Hop, easily conquers the Billboard 200, earning the group their sixth champion on that most important albums tally. The project opens in first place thanks largely to a sizable sales sum–one which is unrivaled this week in the U.S. Even the biggest star in the global music industry couldn’t catch up, despite the fact that holiday shoppers continue to pick up copies of the bestseller.
Hop arrives with 187,000 equivalent units shifted in its first tracking frame of availability in the U.S. 176,000 of those were actual sales, while streams made up most of the rest. That large figure is enough to ensure that Hop launches atop not just the Billboard 200, but also the Top Album Sales chart.
Coming in second place on Billboard’s list of the top-selling albums and EPs in the nation is The Tortured Poets Department. The latest release from Taylor Swift, which arrived this spring, is still hugely popular, and the fact that it is present in the runner-up rung on the purchase-centric list is impressive–though even she couldn’t give Stray Kids a run for their money.
The Tortured Poets Department sold nearly 50,500 copies in the U.S. last week. Hop outsold that bestseller nearly three and a half times over.
Of course, comparing those two sales sums without providing context would be unfair to Swift. The Tortured Poets Department is easily the bestselling album of the year in America, and it’s in a distant first place. Since its release months ago, the title has sold 3.431 million copies, according to Luminate. More than 1.9 million of those were in the project’s first week of availability.
The Tortured Poets Department falls from No. 1 to No. 2 on the current Top Album Sales chart, with a large decrease in purchases from one frame to the next. Last week, Swift’s blockbuster was purchased by 200,000 fans—and likely, their friends and families—in the U.S. alone. Even with a 74% dip in sales, the title is still outpacing plenty of other exciting new releases.
Hop doesn’t only beat Swift this frame. Stray Kids outperform the next six bestselling titles on the Top Album Sales chart combined, a roundup that includes Chappell Roan, Billie Eilish, Sabrina Carpenter, the Wicked soundtrack, and Snoop Dogg’s latest, as well as The Tortured Poets Department.
