On the Charts: BTS Capture Second Number One With ‘Love Yourself: Answer’
K-pop stars become first pop act since One Direction to claim two Billboard 200-topping LPs in one year
BTS, the first K-pop group ever to top the Billboard 200, established more chart history as 'Love Yourself: Answer' debuted at Number One. Photo: Courtesy of BigHit Entertainment
BTS, the first K-pop group ever to top the Billboard 200, established some more chart history as their new album Love Yourself: Answer debuted at Number One.
Love Yourself: Answer, which arrives just three months after BTS hit Number One with Love Yourself: Tear, sold 185,000 total copies in its first week, an improvement over its predecessors’ 135,000 opening week copies.
As Billboard notes, BTS is the first pop act to score two Number One albums in a calendar year since One Direction in 2014.Love Yourself: Answer is also only the second foreign language-dominant LP, following to Love Yourself: Tear, to hit the top spot this decade; before BTS, the last non-English album to reach Number One was Il Divo’s Ancora in February 2006.
One more new release opened in the Top 10 this week: Puerto Rican reggaeton star Ozuna set a new chart high as his new album Aura, which sold 49,000 total copies to bow at Number Seven.
The remaining eight spots in the Top 10 were occupied by returnees, with Travis Scott’s Astroworld holding at Number Two, ahead of Drake’s Scorpion (Number Three), last week’s Billboard 200 champ Ariana Grande’s Sweetener (Number Four), Nicki Minaj’s Queen (Number Five) and Post Malone’s Beerbongs & Bentleys (Number Six).
XXXTentacion’s 17 jumped back into a Top 10 at Number Eight as fans of the late rapper celebrated the album’s one-year anniversary. Juice WRLD’s Goodbye & Good Riddance and Cardi B’s Invasion of Privacy closed out the upper tier.
Next week’s Number One battle between Troye Sivan’s Bloom and Why Don’t We’s 8 Letters was uprooted by the surprise arrival of Eminem’s Kamikaze, now the clear favorite to open atop next week’s Billboard 200.
