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    How Did Melanie’s ’Brand New Key” Hit No. 1?

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    Melanie’s “Brand New Key” is just one of many weird songs that somehow topped the Billboard charts.When Melanie’s “Brand New Key” debuted in 1971, some people were confused. What did the singer, who died on Tuesday at 76, mean when she sang about having a brand-new pair of roller skates and someone else having a brand-new key?Melanie told interviewers that she wrote the song in 15 minutes, after ending a 27-day fast, and that it was intended to be cute. The folk singer said that it did not have a deeper meaning, though many thought its playful lyrics about biking and roller skating were really about sex (“Don’t go too fast but I go pretty far”). It sounded strange, like a song out of time — Melanie said she intended it to hearken to the 1930s — sung with what could now be called a warbling “indie girl voice.” And it somehow hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.The song has lingered in pop culture, from a lip sync battle between Jimmy Fallon and Melissa McCarthy to a post-apocalyptic DJ playing it endlessly on “Kids in the Hall.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Morgan Wallen Spends 14th Week at No. 1

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      The country singer’s latest album, “One Thing at a Time,” has now notched more weeks atop the Billboard chart than any album in more than a decade.The country star Morgan Wallen is back on the road after six weeks of rest, and back once again at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart, notching his 14th nonconsecutive week on top since the release of his latest album, “One Thing at a Time,” in March.With 14 weeks at No. 1, “One Thing at a Time” separates itself from Drake’s “Views,” which totaled 13 chart-topping week in 2016, and gives Wallen the most weeks at No. 1 in more than a decade, since Adele’s “21” ended up with 24 nonconsecutive weeks in 2011 and 2012.This week, “One Thing at a Time” totaled 110,000 album equivalent units, including 139 million in streams and 4,500 in sales, dropping just 1 percent in listener activity since last week, when it returned to No. 1 after two weeks at No. 2. In the 16 weeks it has been out, Wallen’s album has not fallen under 100,000 in equivalent units, tying Bad Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti” for most weeks totaling six figures in the modern counting era, according to Billboard.Wallen’s world tour in support of “One Thing at a Time” resumed last week in Chicago, following six weeks of postponement that the singer said was recommended by doctors for vocal rest. In April, Wallen had abruptly canceled a concert in Mississippi just before he was set to take the stage, angering some fans. Wallen’s tour continues through most of the year, with some rescheduled dates stretching into 2024.In what has become a chart fixture this year, a K-pop group selling collectible CDs also found success this week: Ateez’s “The World EP.2: Outlaw” is No. 2 with 106,000 units, including 101,000 in album sales. Billboard reports that of the 10 albums this year to sell more than 100,000 copies as a complete album, seven have been by K-pop acts offering various CD versions.The rest of the Top 5 includes Gunna’s first album since being released from jail, “A Gift & a Curse,” which totaled 85,000 units at No. 3; Taylor Swift’s “Midnights” at No. 4 with 60,000 units; and SZA’s “SOS,” up to No. 5 from No. 8 with 48,000 units. Wallen’s previous album, “Dangerous: The Double Album,” which spent 10 weeks at No. 1 in 2021, is No. 6. More

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      Taylor Swift Halts Morgan Wallen’s Run at No. 1

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      After 12 straight weeks at the top, the country star’s “One Thing at a Time” yields to Swift’s “Midnights,” which was reissued in expanded editions.For 12 weeks, nothing could stop Morgan Wallen’s domination of the Billboard chart with his latest album, “One Thing at a Time.” Not Metallica. Not Ed Sheeran. Not the Jonas Brothers or solo projects from two members of BTS.Then came deluxe reissues of “Midnights,” Taylor Swift’s seven-month-old LP.With two expanded editions featuring bonus tracks, “Midnights” returns to No. 1, notching its sixth time at the top. One of the new versions, called “The Late Night Edition,” was primarily sold as a CD at Swift’s current stadium tour, though for 24 hours it was also available as a download from the singer’s website. Counting all variations, “Midnights” logged the equivalent of 282,000 sales in the United States last week, including 196,000 copies sold as complete packages and 108 million streams, according to the tracking service Luminate.“Midnights” has been a steady hit since it came out last October. In its 32 weeks on the chart, it has never left the Top 10, and in all but three of those weeks it was in the Top 5. In the United States, “Midnights” has had the equivalent of nearly five million sales and been streamed 3.2 billion times.Lately, as Swift’s Eras Tour has become a cultural juggernaut, her wider catalog has also dotted the upper ranks of the album chart. Last week, Swift had nine titles in the Top 40. (“Lover,” from 2019, is No. 6 this week.) Swift also announced recently that a rerecorded version of her 2010 album “Speak Now” — featuring the hits “Mine,” “Back to December” and “Mean” — will come out in July.The return of “Midnights” bumps Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” to No. 2. Its 12-week consecutive run at the top was historic, falling just one week short of tying a record set by Stevie Wonder in 1977 among albums that open at No. 1 and hold there. Wallen’s last release, “Dangerous: The Double Album,” is No. 5 this week, its 122nd appearance in the Top 10.Also this week, “Almost Healed,” the new album by the Chicago rapper Lil Durk — featuring guest appearances by Alicia Keys, 21 Savage and Wallen — starts at No. 3 with the equivalent of 125,000 sales, including 168 million streams and 2,000 copies sold as a complete package. SZA’s “SOS” is No. 4. More

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      Taylor Swift and Morgan Wallen Dominate Billboard’s Album Chart

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      Wallen spends an eighth week at No. 1 with “One Thing at a Time,” and Swift lands three albums in the Top 10, including the new vinyl set “Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions.”Half of the Billboard album chart’s Top 10 this week belongs to Morgan Wallen and Taylor Swift, with Wallen holding two slots, including No. 1, and Swift taking three.Wallen’s 36-track “One Thing at a Time” remains at the top for an eighth time, with the equivalent of 149,000 sales in the United States, according to the tracking service Luminate. His previous release, “Dangerous: The Double Album,” is No. 7.Agust D — better known as Suga of the K-pop titans BTS — debuts at No. 2 with his first solo studio album, “D-Day.” It had the equivalent of 140,000 sales, including 18 million streams and 122,000 copies sold as a complete album.Swift opens at No. 3 with “Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions,” a two-LP vinyl set released on April 22 as part of Record Store Day, an annual promotion in which artists and labels issue one-day special releases. It was limited to 75,000 copies in the United States, and every one of them was sold, according to Luminate. That is the biggest week for any album on vinyl so far this year, Billboard said.Swift, who is still playing stadiums on her Eras Tour, also occupies No. 4 this week, with her latest studio album, “Midnights,” and No. 10, with “Lover,” from 2019.Also this week, YoungBoy Never Broke Again, the prolific Louisiana rapper, arrives at No. 5 with his new “Don’t Try This at Home,” which features guest appearances by Nicki Minaj, Mariah the Scientist, Post Malone and others. The 33-track album, his 14th to reach the Top 10, had the equivalent of 60,000 sales, including 88 million streams. More

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      Morgan Wallen’s Billboard Chart Streak Enters Its Sixth Week

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      The country star’s latest album, “One Thing at a Time,” maintains its dominance over the Billboard chart. Can it match the 10-week run of Wallen’s “Dangerous”?Can Morgan Wallen do it again?Two years ago, he became the brightest star in country music, and one of most notable new hitmakers in the music industry overall, when his “Dangerous: The Double Album” became a streaming blockbuster and held the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s album chart for 10 weeks straight. That success came even as Wallen faced an industry rebuke — including his temporary removal from country radio playlists — after the singer was caught on tape using a racial slur.Now his latest release, the 36-track “One Thing at a Time,” has notched six weeks at the chart’s peak spot, and shows no sign of slowing down. In its most recent week, it had the equivalent of 167,000 sales in the United States, including 211 million streams and 6,000 copies of the album sold as a complete unit. For weeks, nothing has come close to challenging its position.And so far, “One Thing” is posting even better numbers than “Dangerous” did. Over its first six weeks, “Dangerous” has had just under 1 billion streams, or an average of about 33 million for each of the 30 tracks on its standard edition. “One Thing” is currently at 1.7 billion streams, or 48 million per track.How long can Wallen hold at the top? So far his biggest challenger on next week’s chart is Metallica, whose latest album, “72 Seasons,” was released on Friday.Also this week, the Michigan rapper NF opens at No. 2 with “Hope,” his fifth studio album, which had the equivalent of 123,000 sales, including 57 million streams and 80,500 copies sold as a complete package.Taylor Swift’s “Midnights” is No. 3, SZA’s “SOS” is No. 4 and Melanie Martinez’s “Portals” drops three spots to No. 5 in its second week out. More

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      Karol G’s ‘Mañana Será Bonito’ Is No. 1, Making Chart History

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      The latest release by the Colombian pop star is the first Spanish-language LP by a woman to open at the top of the Billboard 200.In December 2020, Bad Bunny made history on the Billboard charts with the first No. 1 album performed entirely in Spanish (“El Último Tour del Mundo”). Now the Colombian pop star Karol G has set another record with the first Spanish-language LP by a woman to take the top spot.“Mañana Será Bonito” (“Tomorrow Will Be Beautiful”), the fourth studio album by Karol G — the 32-year-old singer born Carolina Giraldo Navarro, instantly recognizable for her bold hair colorings — displaces SZA’s “SOS” on the Billboard 200 after a nearly consecutive 10-week run at the top. “Mañana Será Bonito” opens with the equivalent of 94,000 sales in the United States, including 119 million streams and 10,000 copies sold as a complete package, according to data from the tracking service Luminate.It is the latest sign of the growing commercial power of Latin music. Last year, Bad Bunny, from Puerto Rico, had the most popular album (“Un Verano Sin Ti”) and the biggest global tour. Karol G sold $70 million in tickets to her own tour, which Billboard said made it the highest-grossing tour of the United States by any Latin female artist in history.Karol G’s arrival pushes SZA to second place in her 12th week out, while Gorillaz — the “virtual band” created by the musician Damon Albarn and the visual artist Jamie Hewlett — opens at No. 3 with “Cracker Island,” the group’s eighth studio album. Yeat, a Portland, Ore., rapper at the top of the semi-underground “rage” heap, debuts at No. 4 with “AfterLyfe,” and Taylor Swift’s “Midnights” is in fifth place.Next week’s chart will undoubtedly be dominated by the country star Morgan Wallen, whose latest album, “One Thing at a Time,” came out on Friday. Like his last release, “Dangerous: The Double Album,” it is stuffed with catchy tunes about drinking, breakups and pickup trucks — “One Thing” has 36 tracks, “Dangerous” 30 — and it is already dominating streaming services.The only real questions facing “One Thing” are how big it will open and how long it will last on the chart. “Dangerous,” which came out at the very beginning of 2021, spent 10 consecutive weeks at No. 1 and is now in sixth place, its 109th time in the Top 10. More

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      SZA’s ‘SOS’ Is the No. 1 Album for an Eighth Time

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      The R&B singer-songwriter has matched Taylor Swift’s run with “Folklore,” the last time a female artist held the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s chart for eight weeks.SZA is not done with No. 1 yet.After a one-week dip to second place on the Billboard album chart, SZA — the genre-blurring R&B singer-songwriter born Solána Imani Rowe — returns to No. 1 this week for an eighth time with “SOS,” the hottest LP of the season.“SOS,” SZA’s long-awaited second studio album, had the equivalent of 100,000 sales in the United States in its most recent week out. Virtually all of that activity was attributed to the album’s popularity on streaming services, drawing 135 million clicks, according to the tracking service Luminate. Since “SOS” came out nine weeks ago, it has been streamed 1.7 billion times in the United States alone.With eight weeks at the top, “SOS” has tied the chart run of Taylor Swift’s “Folklore” in 2020, the last time a female artist racked up as many times at No. 1. (For both albums, the accomplishment came in nonconsecutive spans; it took Swift 13 weeks to notch an eighth No. 1 for “Folklore.”) In the last few years, the only albums that have had more are Disney’s “Encanto” soundtrack (nine weeks), Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” (10) and Bad Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti” (13).Also this week, Swift’s “Midnights” rises one spot to No. 2, while the K-pop group Tomorrow X Together, which opened at No. 1 last week with big CD sales of its new five-song EP, “The Name Chapter: Temptation,” fell to No. 3. Wallen’s “Dangerous” is in fourth place — its 106th time in the Top 10 — and Metro Boomin’s “Heroes & Villains” is No. 5.The country-pop star Shania Twain opened at No. 10 with her latest release, “Queen of Me.” More

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      SZA’s ‘SOS’ Holds Strong With Seven Weeks at No. 1

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      The R&B star’s “SOS” has racked up more than 1.4 billion streams and had the equivalent of 1.1 million sales since its December release.When SZA released her latest album, in early December, it was sure to be a hit. “SOS” was the R&B singer-songwriter’s first LP in five years, and arrived with oodles of fan anticipation following a string of Grammy nominations and featured spots with Doja Cat, Kendrick Lamar and Summer Walker.But “SOS” has ended up a steady streaming hit and a chart blockbuster, spending its first seven weeks of release at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. It is the first album by a woman to have at least seven weeks at the top since Taylor Swift’s “Folklore,” which racked up a total of eight over a 13-week period in 2020. It is also the first album by any artist to spend its first seven weeks at No. 1 since Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album,” which sat atop the list for its initial 10 weeks out at the start of 2021.In its seventh week out, “SOS” had the equivalent of 111,000 sales in the United States, including 149 million streams, according to the tracking service Luminate. Since the album was released, it has generated more than 1.4 billion streams, and had the equivalent of 1.1 million sales.Also this week, Swift’s latest LP, “Midnights,” holds strong at No. 2. Since that album came out in October, it has notched a total of five weeks at No. 1 and never fallen lower than second place.The Ohio-born rapper Trippie Redd opens at No. 3 with his latest album, “Mansion Musik,” which had the equivalent of 56,000 sales, including 68 million streams. Hardy, a buzzy country-rock singer and songwriter, opens at No. 4 with a double LP, “The Mockingbird & the Crow,” which had the equivalent of 55,000 sales, including about 45 million streams.“Heroes & Villains,” by the producer Metro Boomin, is No. 5. More

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      SZA Matches Adele With Six Straight Weeks at No. 1

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      “SOS,” the latest album by the R&B singer, once again tops the Billboard album chart, matching the streak of Adele’s “30.”For the sixth consecutive week, “SOS,” the second album by the frank-talking R&B singer-songwriter SZA, tops the Billboard album chart, matching the streak of Adele’s latest release, “30,” in late 2021 and early 2022.Holding nearly steady in listener activity for the last three weeks — down only four percent week over week — “SOS” had the equivalent of 119,000 sales in the United States, including 160 million streams for its songs, according to the tracking service Luminate. Those numbers put the album just shy of one million in equivalent sales, which combine purchases and streams, in its first six weeks of release.The last album to achieve at least six straight weeks atop the Billboard 200 chart was the soundtrack to Disney’s “Encanto,” which notched eight in early 2022. But, according to Billboard, the only female artists to achieve at least six consecutive weeks at No. 1 in the last decade-plus are Adele and Taylor Swift, placing SZA, 33, in elite company. (The country singer Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” scored 10 straight weeks at No. 1 in 2021.)The reign of “SOS” also marks the longest run atop the album chart for an R&B release since Usher’s “Confessions” in 2004; Janet Jackson’s “Janet.” was the last R&B album by a woman to spend its first six weeks at No. 1, back in 1993, Billboard reported.“Midnights” by Swift holds at No. 2 this week with 73,000 equivalents, followed by Metro Boomin’s “Heroes & Villains” (No. 3 with 56,000); Drake and 21 Savage’s “Her Loss” (No. 4 with 47,000); and “The Highlights,” a compilation by the Weeknd, at No. 5 with 44,000.On the Hot 100 singles chart, a new song by Miley Cyrus titled “Flowers” could make its debut at No. 1, challenging Swift’s “Anti-Hero” (which has spent eight weeks on top), SZA’s “Kill Bill” and Bizarrap and Shakira’s “Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 53.”Spotify said “Flowers” became the most-streamed song in a single week in the service’s history, though Billboard would not announce its final Hot 100 chart until Tuesday, “due to data processing delays.” More