The Swedish hard-rock band Ghost has never topped the Billboard 200 albums chart — until this week, when Skeletá hit the chart's pinnacle on the strength of physical sales. On the Hot 100 singles chart, Kendrick Lamar's "Luther (feat. SZA)" holds at No. 1 for an 11th week, tying a record for hip-hop songs. And the race to determine 2025's song of the summer heats up, as the frontrunners (Alex Warren's "Ordinary," et al) face off against new entries by Lorde, Young Thug and Benson Boone.
TOP ALBUMS
The Billboard charts were remarkably unremarkable last week, as no new albums debuted in the top 60 and a two-year-old juggernaut — SZA's supersized SOS — returned to No. 1, more or less by default. This week, we finally get a shakeup, courtesy of a seemingly unlikely source: the Swedish hard-rock band Ghost, whose new album Skeletá debuts atop the Billboard 200.
Hard rock hasn't had an easy time on the charts in recent years: The last such act to top the albums chart was AC/DC, whose Power Up hit No. 1 for a single week in late 2020. But, while Skeletá is enjoying the best single-week performance of any album in Ghost's career, the band itself is no stranger to the Billboard charts: It's actually the ninth Ghost album to crack the Billboard 200, dating back to 2013's Infestissumam, and the fifth to hit the top 10. And its most recent studio album prior to Skeletá, 2022's Impera, hit No. 2.
The success of Skeletá isn't just a product of a slow week, either. The record accumulated 86,000 "equivalent album units" — that's Billboard-ese for the combination of sales and streaming that goes into determining how albums are ranked each week — which would have been enough to carry Ghost to No. 1 in any of the previous three weeks.
Still, don't look for Skeletá to sit atop the Billboard 200 for much longer. Not only are new albums by major contenders (Young Thug, Morgan Wallen, et al) looming, but the lion's share of Skeletá's numbers are derived from album sales — particularly vinyl — rather than streaming. That's a recipe for chart success of the short-lived variety, given that most fans only buy a physical album once. Still, it's an impressive feat for a band that's still gaining momentum more than a decade into its career.
Elsewhere on the Billboard 200, the most notable move — besides the top 20 debuts of new albums by singer-songwriter d4vd and country star Tucker Wetmore — belongs to one of 2024's biggest breakthrough acts. Shaboozey, whose single "A Bar Song (Tipsy)" remains in the top 5 after a 19-week run atop the Billboard Hot 100 last year, bounds from No. 45 to No. 8 with Where I've Been, Isn't Where I'm Going. A recent reissue of the album added six songs to its run, and if nothing else, the chart surge of Where I've Been's deluxe edition suggests that fans are interested in fresh Shaboozey material beyond his inescapable signature hit and "Good News," which is still floating around the top 40's lower reaches.
TOP SONGS
There's no Swedish hard rock to upset the top of the Hot 100 singles chart: As it did last week, and many weeks prior to that, Kendrick Lamar's "Luther (feat. SZA)" sits at No. 1, extending its run at the top to 11 weeks. That, in turn, ties the all-time record for longest streak at No. 1 by a hip-hop song, matching Roddy Ricch's 2019 hit "The Box."
As frequently discussed in this space, the streaming era has led to songs sitting at the top of the Hot 100 for ever-longer stretches, as algorithms feed people songs they've already heard and radio programmers look to the streaming charts for a sense of what people want to hear. Still, it takes a remarkable confluence of events — in Lamar's case, a colossal hit album, followed by a string of huge Grammy wins and a viral Super Bowl halftime show — to reach the top in the first place. Anyone who can pull off an extended run atop the charts in 2025 has accomplished something exceedingly rare and difficult.
If this sounds like a eulogy for the chart-topping streak of "Luther," well… it just might be. Because Alex Warren's "Ordinary," which has been climbing the charts steadily for months, looks primed to take over the top spot in the next week or two, as it climbs from No. 3 to No. 2 on the strength of airplay growth — which, as noted above, tends to be a lagging indicator behind blockbuster streaming numbers.
For weeks, everything has been lining up for "Ordinary" to claim 2025's "song of the summer" crown — more on that race below — as streaming growth begets radio growth and wedding season kicks into high gear. With "Ordinary" surging past Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars' once-immovable "Die With a Smile" (which slips from No. 2 to No. 3), "Ordinary" has just one song left to topple.
WORTH NOTING
Assuming it follows the same schedule as last year, Billboard won't kick off 2025's Songs of the Summer chart for another month or so. But it's still a fine time to game out the contenders, from Alex Warren's "Ordinary" — which looks increasingly like a slam dunk, at least in terms of chart placement — to BigXthaPlug's "All the Way (feat. Bailey Zimmerman)," a hip-hop/country hybrid that still sits at No. 11 after debuting at No. 4 a few weeks ago.
Naturally, given the season, new song-of-the-summer contenders are dropping all the time — and hoping against hope that they can oust the top 10's mustiest immovable objects. (Teddy Swims' "Lose Control," which still sits at No. 7, has been in the top 10 for an all-time-record 60 weeks.)
Even as the same old songs round out the top 10 — yes, Shaboozey's "A Bar Song (Tipsy)" is still there, along with Benson Boone's "Beautiful Things" — there are three top 40 debuts worth noting:
- Lorde has known life as a song-of-the-summer purveyor, though her last album (2021's Solar Power) underperformed; now, her new song, "What Was That," debuts at No. 36.
- Following his release from prison last fall, Young Thug drops a new album, UY Scuti, this Friday; the first single, "Money on Money (feat. Future)," bows on this week's Hot 100 at No. 39.
- And Benson Boone's new single, "Mystical Magical," joins two of the singer's older songs — "Sorry I'm Here for Someone Else" at No. 33 and "Beautiful Things" at No. 9 — on the Hot 100, debuting at No. 40. Time will tell if fans, streamers and radio programmers are willing to let Boone replace himself in the top 10.
Finally, speaking of stars with multiple singles competing for chart supremacy, Morgan Wallen's latest single — "I Ain't Coming Back," a collaboration with Post Malone — drops from No. 8 to No. 25 in its second week on the Hot 100. Wallen is one of the most reliable hitmakers in America, with a record-setting six (!) new or newish songs cracking the top 10 in the run-up to the release of I'm the Problem on May 16. But it's hard enough to snag song-of-the-summer status — as Wallen has done in each of the past two years — when you aren't competing with your own work.
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