Harry Styles’ sophomore album, Fine Line, is all but a cinch for the top spot on the Rolling Stone Top 200 Albums Chart. On Wednesday’s daily edition of the RS 200, the album had already pulled in 369,300 units, which is nearly nine times the units for the Number Two album, Roddy Ricch’s Please Excuse Me For Being Antisocial.
Eighty-two percent of Styles’ units so far have come from album sales, boosted by bundles including a $75 T-shirt designed by Gucci’s Alessandro Michele, with a portion of the proceeds going to the Global Fund for Women. The album had also seen over 67 million on-demand audio streams by Wednesday’s chart. “Adore You” led with 9.1 million streams, ranking ninth in the daily edition of the RS 100.
The Rolling Stone 200 Albums chart tracks the most popular releases of the week in the United States. Entries are ranked by album units, a number that combines digital and physical album sales, digital song sales and audio streams using a custom weighting system. The chart does not include passive listening such as terrestrial radio or digital radio. The Rolling Stone 200 Albums chart is updated daily, and each week Rolling Stone finalizes and publishes an official version of the chart, covering the seven-day period ending with the previous Thursday.
Fine Line has been not only a commercial success, but a critical one as well: The album earned a four-star review from Rolling Stone and also ranked 23rd on Rolling Stone’s list of the 50 Best Albums of 2019.
In his Rolling Stone cover story earlier this year, Styles said he drew inspiration from David Bowie — as well as magic mushrooms — while making the album. “Always go a little further into the water than you feel you are capable of being in. Go a little bit out of your depth,” he said. “And when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting.”
Styles also rises to Number Two on Wednesday’s Artists 500 Chart, a couple million streams behind Juice WRLD, who saw a massive increase in sales and streams after his sudden death at age 21 on December 8th.