The Raconteurs’ Help Us Stranger landed at Number One on Rolling Stone‘s inaugural Top 200 Albums chart, earning 85,000 album-equivalent units during the week of June 21st through June 27th.
The band’s success was driven by old-fashioned physical album sales, which accounted for more than 95% of the group’s first-week total. The Raconteurs bundled copies of Help Us Stranger with tickets to their upcoming tour. In addition, their album amassed 4.2 million streams during its debut week, according to the analytics company Alpha Data, formerly known as BuzzAngle Music.
The Rolling Stone 200 Albums chart tracks the most popular albums of the week in the United States. Albums 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.
Second on the Rolling Stone 200 chart is the wunderkind Lil Nas X, whose debut EP 7 earned 75,000 album units during the week of June 21st through June 27th. In direct contrast to the Raconteurs, who relied heavily on physical sales, Lil Nas X was boosted largely by streaming: The songs on 7 were collectively streamed more than 128 million times.
The only other new release to debut in the Top Ten is Gucci Mane’s Delusions of Grandeur. The rapper’s latest full-length was also driven mostly by streaming, amassing over 38 million streams. The title’s most popular track, “Ice,” also debuted on Rolling Stone‘s Top 100 Songs chart.
The rest of the Top Ten is populated by holdovers: Billie Eilish’s When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, the Jonas Brothers’ Happiness Begins, Khalid’s Free Spirit, DaBaby’s Baby on Baby, Polo G’s Die a Legend, Ariana Grande’s Thank U, Next, and Luke Combs’ This One’s for You Too.
Outside of the Top Ten, Willie Nelson’s Ride Me Back Home landed at Number 25, with physical sales accounting for nearly all of the country veteran’s first-week total. Prince’s posthumous Originals collection clocked in at Number 37, also thanks to a healthy number of physical sales.
For more on Rolling Stone‘s chart initiative, read our welcome post.