The shape-shifting pop songwriter’s new album debuts atop the Billboard 200, and Chappell Roan’s “Midwest Princess” holds at No. 2.
Post Malone, the face-tattooed singer and songwriter who emerged a decade ago with a rock-meets-folk-meets-rap style that caught fire on streaming services, opens at No. 1 on the latest Billboard album chart with “F-1 Trillion,” which repositions the star in a country context.
“F-1 Trillion,” featuring guest spots by a bevy of Nashville stars like Dolly Parton, Tim McGraw, Morgan Wallen, Lainey Wilson and Jelly Roll, was released on Aug. 16 — two days after Post Malone’s debut at the Grand Ole Opry — and garnered the equivalent of 250,000 sales in the United States. That total includes 213 million streams and 80,000 copies sold as a complete unit, according to the tracking service Luminate. The full “deluxe” version of the album has 27 tracks.
The success of “F-1 Trillion” is the latest swerve in the story of Post Malone — real name Austin Post — who in the late 2010s became one of the flagship stars of the streaming era with emotive earworms like “Rockstar,” “Better Now” and “Sunflower.” His albums “Beerbongs & Bentleys” (2018) and “Hollywood’s Bleeding” (2019) were mainstays in the top ranks of the chart. But he stumbled with two follow-up LPs, “Twelve Carat Toothache” (2022) and “Austin” (2023), which leaned deeper into pop and rock but had considerably weaker sales.
Recently, Post Malone returned as an unexpected guest star on two of this year’s biggest albums: Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” and Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department,” where he duetted with Swift on the album’s lead single, “Fortnight.” In May, he revealed his country direction with “I Had Some Help,” featuring Wallen, the first single from “F-1 Trillion”; it became his first solo No. 1 on the Hot 100 chart since “Circles” in 2019. (“Fortnight,” naturally, went straight to the top.)
Also this week on the Billboard 200 album chart, Chappell Roan’s “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess” holds at No. 2, while Swift’s “Tortured Poets” falls to No. 3 after logging its 15th week at No 1. Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” is No. 4 and Billie Eilish’s “Hit Me Hard and Soft” is in fifth place.
Source: Elections - nytimes.com
