Jeremy Yudin
Toronto artist The Weeknd owns the most successful album of 2020 so far.
The R&B artist released his seventh album ‘After Hours’ on March 20. During its debut week, the album sold 444,000 units in the U.S., far and away ahead of Lil Uzi Vert’s ‘Eternal Atake,’ which sold 114,000 units.
After Hours would still be No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart even if it didn’t sell a copy.
The album includes two single November releases ‘Heartless,’ and ‘Blinding Lights.’ Heartless topped No. 1 on the all-genre Billboard Hot 100. Blinding Lights, which released two days after Heartless, is No. 2 on the most recently published Hot 100.
TikTok users have even created a viral dance that syncs perfectly with Blinding Lights.
After Hours has had the most successful week for an R&B album in nearly four years. The last album to blow the genre out of the water was the 2016 release of Beyoncé’s ‘Lemonade’, which sold more than 650,000 units in a week.
After Hours has streamed over 220 million times in its first week, making it the largest streaming week ever for an R&B album. It beats The Weeknd’s own Starboy, which gained 175.2 million streams in its first week.
The Weeknd also earns the biggest album release by a male R&B artist since December 2014, when Billboard 200 started ranking album units.
The Toronto based artist now has four straight No. 1 albums, after ‘My Dear Melancholy’ (one week at No. 1, in 2018), Starboy (five weeks at No. 1 in 2016-17) and Beauty Behind the Madness (three weeks at No. 1 in 2015).