In a slow week for new albums, pop singer Tate McRae reigns supreme

With little movement near the top of this week’s Billboard albums chart, one new album rules them all: Tate McRae‘s So Close to What, which becomes the Canadian pop singer’s first chart-topper. On the Hot 100 singles chart, Kendrick Lamar‘s “Luther (feat. SZA)” holds at No. 1 — it’s one of four Lamar songs in the top 10 — while Drake‘s stay in the singles chart’s upper reaches is proving short-lived.

TOP ALBUMS

Last week, Drake’s album-length collaboration with producer PARTYNEXTDOOR, $ome $exy $ongs 4 U, knocked the rapper’s powerful nemesis — that’d be Grammy-winning Super Bowl halftime star Kendrick Lamar — out of the No. 1 spot. This week, $exy $ongs $tays ahead of Lamar’s GNX, but there’s a new chart-topper in town: effortful Canadian pop singer-songwriter and dancer Tate McRae, whose So Close to What debuts in the top spot, sending $ome $exy $ongs 4 U and GNX to Nos. 2 and 3, respectively.

McRae, who first caught the public’s attention as a finalist on the 13th season of So You Think You Can Dance in 2016, has been bubbling up ever since — and finally achieved a major breakthrough with the success of her second album, Think Later, in 2023. That album hit No. 4 on the strength of a massive pop single, “Greedy,” as well as high-profile TV appearances on Saturday Night Live and other shows. A viral star on TikTok, McRae was one of the most streamed artists in the U.S. last year.

Never one to let an exceedingly minor milestone pass without notice, Billboard notes that So Close to What “launches with the biggest debut week for a studio album by a woman in five months.” (Stop the presses!) But the performance of So Close to What does portend a big year for McRae.

Though none of the new album’s songs has yet matched the success of “Greedy” — that song peaked at No. 3 — she’s landed 11 of them on this week’s Hot 100, with the single “Sports Car” leading the pack as it leaps from No. 57 to a new chart peak at No. 16. With a healthy mix of streaming and sales, So Close to What is in a decent position to stick around on the charts for a while. But its staying power, and McRae’s short-term bid for sustained stardom, likely hinge on whether one of its songs can fully take off the way “Greedy” did in 2023 and ’24.

TOP SONGS

If you thought Kendrick Lamar was due to plummet back down to Earth once memories of his Grammy-night domination and Super Bowl halftime show began to fade, you were sorely mistaken. He’s still dominating the Hot 100 weeks later, with four songs sticking around in the top 10 — including “Luther (feat. SZA),” which holds at No. 1 for a second week — and three of the top four. “Squabble Up” has begun to slide, as it falls from No. 5 to No. 10, but “Luther,” “Not Like Us” and “TV Off (feat. Lefty Gunplay)” are all solidly battling it out with Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars‘ “Die With a Smile” for chart supremacy. (“Die With a Smile” creeps back up from No. 3 to No. 2 after topping the chart for five nonconsecutive weeks, so it’s not going anywhere anytime soon — especially with Gaga’s Mayhem dropping this Friday.)

Elsewhere on the Hot 100, the songs from Drake and PARTYNEXTDOOR’s $ome $exy $ongs 4 U are showing signs of a quick fade. “Gimme a Hug” and “Nokia” fall out of the top 10, and while “Nokia” slips just one spot — from No. 10 to No. 11 — “Gimme a Hug” plummets from No. 6 all the way to No. 28. That’s left a bit of room for a few familiar faces to resume their runs in the top 10. Chappell Roan‘s “Pink Pony Club,” which surged briefly in the aftermath of her Grammy performance, hits a new chart peak as it climbs from No. 11 to No. 8. And Teddy Swims‘ “Lose Control” continues to prove virtually immortal, as it rises from No. 12 to No. 9 — and notches an 80th week on the Hot 100, which is good for the fourth-longest mark in Billboard history.

Speaking of unkillable songs, Shaboozey‘s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” — which last year tied the all-time record for most weeks at No. 1, with 19 — climbs from No. 9 to No. 5. It’s wild to see that song and “Lose Control” actually gain strength after so many months on the chart, but that’s life in the streaming era: Once a song has cemented its status with both streamers and commercial radio stations’ increasingly ossified playlists, it’s liable to stick around on the charts for what feels like forever.

Speaking of which, “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” has now topped Billboard‘s Hot Country Songs ranking for 36 weeks, surpassing 2017’s inescapable Sam Hunt smash “Body Like a Back Road” for the second-longest run at No. 1 in the chart’s history. It still has a ways to go if it’s going to break the record held by Bebe Rexha and Florida Georgia Line’s even-more-inescapable “Meant to Be,” which ruled the Hot Country Songs chart for an astonishing 50 weeks in 2017-18. Given that Morgan Wallen‘s new album, I’m the Problem, is due for release sometime in the coming months, challenging the all-time record may be too tall an order, even for the mighty ‘Booz.

WORTH NOTING

For decades, albums hitting the Billboard charts experienced a common trajectory: A record would be released and it would climb the chart steadily until it hit its peak weeks or even months later. Even for major stars, debuts at No. 1 were unheard-of, until Elton John‘s Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy pulled it off in 1975. (He actually accomplished the feat again later that year, with Rock of the Westies.)

Nowadays, a slow-and-steady climb to the top is much less common — and generally reserved for breakthroughs by new and heretofore little-known artists. If you want a sense of how the standard chart trajectory has been inverted in the streaming era, consider this: For four straight weeks, the top 13 albums on the Billboard 200 have all already peaked at either No. 1 or No. 2.

Not every album in question debuted at or near the top of the chart; both Chappell Roan’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess and Noah Kahan‘s Stick Season, each of which peaked at No. 2, experienced steady rises fueled by word of mouth. But those albums are the exceptions rather than the rule.

Numerous factors have made the top of the Billboard charts the domain of pre-existing superstars, from streaming algorithms to a system in which mega-stars like Taylor Swift and Travis Scott can manipulate the charts by selling variant editions — vinyl copies, discounted digital versions, that sort of thing — on their webstores. It’s harder than ever for a Roan or a Kahan to break through, to say nothing of what it’ll take for the next up-and-comer to seize their spot on the charts.