Chappell Roan Inches Closer to First Number One Album

Chappell Roan‘s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess hit its all-time high on the Billboard Albums chart this week, the publication announced on Sunday, with Roan’s debut album rising to Number Two as it continues its months-long charts climb.

The new chart feat comes as Roan has enjoyed her meteoric superstar rise over the summer, reflected with several candidates for song of the summer and viral festival performances drawing huge crowds at Governor’s Ball and Lollapalooza. As Spotify told Rolling Stone, streams on Midwest Princess had doubled over the past two months. Roan’s album moved 72,000 units this week.

Midwest Princess’s climb is peculiar in this modern era of the music industry. The album’s rise has been a slow burn with rising sales and streams the way albums and songs used to be marketed, a juxtaposition to the immediacy of streaming dictating hits and flops right away. “Hot To Go!” marked its one-year anniversary last week, with the full album arriving last September. But it didn’t debut on the Billboard 200 albums chart until April, starting at Number 127. By the first week of June, it was all the way up to 16, and hit the Top Five in July before hitting third place last week.

Remaining at Number One is Taylor Swift‘s The Tortured Poets Department, which has spent 15 non-consecutive weeks atop the chart since it came out in April. It’s by far the biggest album of the year so far, and through the first half of the year, it’s garnered more sales than the rest of the Top 10 combined.

Swift’s courted some disapproval from fans online, however, over the sheer amount of versions of the album she’s released, with some stating she’d blocked other artists like Billie Eilish and Charli XCX from topping the charts with new TPD variants released the week of those debuts. Swift released another two limited edition versions this past week, with some chart tracking sites on social media pointing out a narrow race for this week’s number one. Swift beat Roan by 13,000 units this week, per Billboard. As Billboard notes, however, Swift’s album would’ve been the number one album this week even if it hadn’t sold a single digital album.

Given how long Roan’s album has been climbing, a Midwest Princess Number One is still possible, though with Post Malone releasing his much-anticipated country album F-1 Trillion this week featuring collabs with heavy hitters including Morgan Wallen, Luke Combs, Chris Stapleton and Dolly Parton, that path may have just gotten a lot harder.

From Rolling Stone US.