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Noah Kahan’s The Great Divide Holds No. 1 for a Second Week on the Billboard 200
Noah Kahan’s The Great Divide stays No. 1 on the Billboard 200, while Kacey Musgraves and Michael Jackson make big top 10 moves.
Noah Kahan’s The Great Divide is back on top of the Billboard 200 for a second straight week, holding firm on the chart dated May 16 after debuting at No. 1 just one week earlier. The album earned 163,000 equivalent album units in the United States in the week ending May 7, according to Luminate, a sharp drop from its 389,000-unit opening but still enough to keep Kahan ahead of the pack.
That kind of repeat No. 1 is not something rock albums have done often lately. The Great Divide is the first rock album to spend at least two weeks at No. 1 in nearly three years. The last one to manage it was Zach Bryan’s self-titled album, which spent two weeks atop the chart in September 2023. Billboard defines rock albums broadly, including releases eligible for, or already charting on, the Top Rock Albums list.
The week’s top 10 also brings a new breakthrough for Kacey Musgraves, whose Middle of Nowhere arrives at No. 3 with 100,000 equivalent album units. It’s her sixth top 10 album, and every one of them has debuted inside the top five. The album marks her best week ever by units, with 64,500 of that total coming from album sales, 35,000 from streaming and 500 from track sales.
Musgraves’ latest set was announced in early March and released on May 1. Middle of Nowhere includes collaborations with Gregory Alan Isakov, Miranda Lambert, Willie Nelson and Billy Strings, and was led by “Dry Spell,” which peaked at No. 15 on Hot Country Songs in March. A little more than three months after the album’s release, her Middle of Nowhere arena tour is set to begin Aug. 21 in Chicago and continue through the end of October.
The album’s first week also got a lift from the physical side of the market, with 16 variants available, including signed editions, plus a deluxe download version that added two bonus tracks. And for chart trivia fans, it becomes only the second top 10 album to share that exact title. Hanson’s Middle of Nowhere reached No. 2 back in 1997.
Elsewhere in the upper reaches of the chart, Ella Langley’s Dandelion slips one spot to No. 2 with 103,000 equivalent album units. Morgan Wallen’s former No. 1 I’m the Problem moves 3-4 with 83,000 units, up 3 percent.
The Michael Jackson chart bump keeps rolling, too. Fueled by renewed attention around the Michael biopic, Jackson places two albums in the top 10. Thriller rises 7-5 with 62,000 equivalent album units, while Number Ones climbs 13-6 with 62,000 units, giving Jackson his 11th top 10 album and his first top 10 appearance for Number Ones, which was released in 2003.
With that move, Jackson has now landed at least one new top 10 album in every decade from the 1970s onward as a solo artist, a distinction shared by only four others: Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen and James Taylor. His run stretches from Ben and Off the Wall in the 1970s, through the era-defining dominance of Thriller and Bad in the 1980s, then Dangerous and HIStory: Past, Present and Future Book 1 in the 1990s, Invincible and the soundtrack to Michael Jackson’s This Is It in the 2000s, Michael and Xscape in the 2010s, and now Number Ones in the 2020s.
BTS’ ARIRANG falls from 5-7 with 49,000 equivalent album units, while Olivia Dean’s The Art of Loving holds steady at No. 8 with 42,000. Wallen’s One Thing at a Time remains at No. 9 with 40,000, and Bad Bunny’s DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS closes out the top 10, rising 12-10 with 37,000 units.
The Billboard 200 ranks the most popular albums in the U.S. each week using equivalent album units, which combine album sales, track equivalent albums and streaming equivalent albums. Luminate compiles the data and reviews submissions before chart results are finalized.
