All hail to Lady Gaga, the Mother Monster!
The highly anticipated album “Chromatica” was originally scheduled for release on April 10, though that date was pushed back to May 29 in the wake of the global coronavirus pandemic.
Likewise, the album is star-studded such as Ariana Grande, Blackpinkl and Elton John. Other tracks on Chromatica — made with producers and songwriters including BloodPop, Burns, Justin Tranter, Max Martin, Rami Yacoub, and more — include the Blackpink-assisted “Sour Candy,” liberation anthem “Free Woman,” three orchestral interludes made in collaboration with White Sea, and “Sine From Above,” an Axwell-produced duet with Elton John.
The pair’s new collaboration, “Rain on Me” — an upbeat banger about embracing past trauma — has debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming Gaga’s fifth and Grande’s fourth song to reach the chart’s top position. Two singles preceded the album: February’s “Stupid Love,” which launched at No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100, and May’s “Rain on Me”.
Grande has also broken a record as the only person to have four songs debut at No. 1 on the domestic chart, just two weeks after her Justin Bieber duet “Stuck With U” debuted atop the publication’s weekly song ranking, while Gaga has now attained No. 1 singles in three different decades (the ’00s, the ’10s, and the ’20s) — including two that have debuted at No. 1.
Across its first week of release, “Rain on Me” rose to the No. 1 position after tallying 31.4 million streams, commanding an audience of 11.1 million on radio, and moving 72,000 paid digital downloads. Following February’s “Stupid Love,” the song is the second single from Gaga’s new album, Chromatica, which dropped Friday and is tracking to top the Billboard 200 albums chart next week.
Previously, Gaga reached the No. 1 spot with “Just Dance” and “Poker Face” — both from her 2008 debut album The Fame — as well as “Born This Way,” the lead single from her 2011 album of the same name. It took nearly eight years for Gaga to achieve her next chart-topping single, when “Shallow” .
Moreover, the music platform have announced last Sunday that Chromatica’s debut is the biggest of the year for a female artist, and the fifth biggest of 2020 across all releases.
And for the record, it is the biggest female album debut of 2020 so far. Mother Monster has scored her sixth consecutive No. 1 album with her latest studio set Chromatica, as the house-inspired LP moved 274,000 units for a first-place finish on the Billboard 200 albums chart. Her second single with Ariana Grande “Rain on Me” also peaks number 1 at Billboard 100.
Chromatica sold 205,000 copies (including merchandise/album bundles and album/concert ticket packages), for the total contributing to the first-week total, while streaming units totaled 65,000 (around 87.16 million on-demand streams of album’s tracks, the largest for a pop album in 2020) and track sales adding a further 4,000 units to the grand total for the week ending June 4.
And true enough, massive first-week sales numbers are pouring on Lady Gaga.
In scoring six No. 1 albums in nine years (2011’s Born This Way, 2013’s Artpop, 2014’s Cheek to Cheek, 2016’s Joanne, 2018’s A Star Is Born, and Chromatica), Gaga has also broken the record for the fastest accumulation of six albums to reach the Billboard summit. The 34-year-old’s total makes her one of only eight women to have achieved six No. 1 albums throughout their career, with the others being Beyoncé (six), Mariah Carey (six), Britney Spears (six), Taylor Swift (six), Janet Jackson (seven), Madonna (nine), and Barbra Streisand (11).
