LISA of BLACKPINK’s ‘Alter Ego’ debuts within the high 10 of the Billboard 200 chart : NPR

This week’s pop charts do not supply a lot in the best way of recent faces, as Kendrick Lamar tops each the Billboard 200 albums chart (with GNX) and the Sizzling 100 singles chart (together with his SZA collaboration “Luther”). However there is one debut price noting: LISA, a member of the blockbuster Okay-pop woman group BLACKPINK, enters the Billboard 200 at No. 7 together with her new solo album Alter Ego.

TOP ALBUMS

In current weeks, we have seen No. 1 debuts by big-name stars in pop, hip-hop, Latin music and R&B, as albums by Tate McRae, Drake & PARTYNEXTDOOR, The Weeknd, Dangerous Bunny and Lil Child have all entered the Billboard 200 at No. 1 since 2025 dawned. However in weeks when a world-beater does not enter {the marketplace}, issues can get prettttttty gradual on the ol’ charts.

With Woman Gaga‘s new album Mayhem set to make its presence felt subsequent week, the pre-storm calm sees just one album debut within the high 50: That’d be Alter Ego by LISA of the Okay-pop group BLACKPINK, in addition to the most recent season of The White Lotus; it bows at No. 7. (Extra on LISA, and the nice BLACKPINK diaspora, in a second.) In any other case, we get a shuffling of pre-existing powerhouses, as Kendrick Lamar’s GNX returns to No. 1 and switches spots with McRae’s So Near What, which drops to No. 3 in its second week.)

The remaining albums within the high 5, and far of the highest 10, maintain on the spots they occupied final week, together with Drake and PARTYNEXTDOOR’s $ome $exy $ongs 4 U, which is proving sturdy at No. 2. However, utilizing the metric by which the Billboard 200 is ranked — a cocktail, dubbed “equal album items,” that mixes gross sales and streaming numbers — it is a down week throughout the board.

Apart from Alter Ego, the one different album to debut within the high 100 is Fridayy’s Some Days I am Good, Some Days I am Not, which debuts at No. 51. Fridayy, a Philly-based R&B singer, has already scored hits with Lil Child and DJ Khaled, so he isn’t new to the charts. However this week does mark his introduction to the Billboard 200 as a headliner after his self-titled debut, from 2023, didn’t crack the chart. He is clearly ascendant, nevertheless Some Days I am Good performs within the weeks to come back.

TOP SONGS

Typically, the Billboard charts are a research in incrementalism: When confronted with a logjam close to the highest, you search for borderline-imperceptible shifts from week to week that, over time, trace at bigger tendencies. As a result of, for those who do not hunt down these shifts, the charts can resemble… effectively, this week’s Sizzling 100, which appears an terrible lot like final week’s Sizzling 100.

How static is that this week’s high 10? Effectively, the highest 9 songs reside within the actual positions they occupied final week. Kendrick Lamar’s “Luther (feat. SZA)” holds at No. 1 for a 3rd straight week, adopted by Woman Gaga and Bruno Mars‘ indomitable “Die With a Smile” and two extra Lamar tracks — “Not Like Us” and “TV Off (feat. Lefty Gunplay)” — at Nos. 3 and 4, respectively. The primary little bit of chart motion finds Drake’s “Nokia” ticking up a spot to No. 10 and displacing Lamar’s “Squabble Up”; within the year-old beef between the 2 rappers, this might qualify because the tiniest of victories.

However, within the spirit of incremental indicators that time to bigger development, the music holding at No. 8 — Chappell Roan‘s “Pink Pony Membership” — does high this week’s Digital Music Gross sales chart, marking the primary time the singer has ever hit No. 1 by way of that individual metric. Gross sales are finicky from week to week, but it surely does counsel that “Pink Pony Membership” (maybe with an help from no much less a light-weight than Rick Astley) continues to be reaching new audiences a yr and a half after the discharge of Roan’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess. And, together with her new single “The Giver” dropping Thursday night time, she appears more likely to obtain one other chart increase within the close to future.

For many who have not adopted Roan’s slow-then-fast rise to superstardom, “Pink Pony Membership” is way older than the album that accommodates it. The singer first launched the monitor by way of a special main label all the best way again in April 2020, solely to get dropped; after she reacquired the rights to the music, she included it on what grew to become her breakthrough album. So the rise of “Pink Pony Membership” to this week’s pinnacle — the top-selling music in America, with about 6,000 digital gross sales — has taken solely 5 years. Don’t be concerned; not a lot else has occurred in that point.

WORTH NOTING

As talked about above, the one album to debut on this week’s high 50 belongs to LISA, one in every of 4 members of BLACKPINK. The Okay-pop girl-group juggernaut has been quiet for a short time now — its final album, the chart-topping world phenomenon Born Pink, got here out in 2022 — so as to enable its members a little bit of area to launch solo initiatives. And all 4 have accomplished effectively for themselves, with extra information to observe when JENNIE’s solo album (which got here out final Friday, only one week after LISA’s Alter Ego) inevitably turns up on subsequent week’s charts.

Let’s run down the BLACKPINK solo stats as they at the moment stand:

• ROSÉ has discovered the widest success within the U.S. to this point, at the least so far as the pop charts are involved. Her debut solo album rosie entered the Billboard 200 at No. 3 in December — and, most notably, spawned the colossal hit “APT.,” her earworm with Bruno Mars. That music holds at No. 6 on this week’s Sizzling 100 and has been a mainstay on the chart for months now. (As for rosie, it sits at No. 41 in its thirteenth week on the Billboard 200.)
• LISA simply grew to become the second BLACKPINK member to notch a high 10 album, as Alter Ego enters this week’s chart at No. 7. Its songs have not but caught on in a significant means right here — her solely Sizzling 100 hit this week, “Born Once more (feat. Doja Cat and RAYE),” re-enters the chart at No. 96, although three of her songs cracked the chart’s decrease areas final yr — however she’s made waves within the TV and film worlds in current weeks. Not solely does she seem on the brand new season of The White Lotus, however she additionally carried out Wings‘ “Dwell and Let Die” on the Academy Awards telecast earlier this month. She’ll want a lift from streaming if she needs Alter Ego to have a protracted chart life (although it is this week’s high vendor, its streaming numbers aren’t out of this world), however she’s already carved out a far-reaching pop-cultural presence this yr.
• JENNIE is ready to hit subsequent week’s Billboard 200, after Ruby dropped final Friday. Like LISA, JENNIE has labored as an actress; she turned up within the misbegotten HBO sequence The Idol a pair years in the past. And, although her chart success as a solo artist within the U.S. has been restricted to date — three songs from Ruby have popped up close to the underside of the Sizzling 100 in current months — she’s had large solo success abroad. Subsequent week will inform the story of how a lot her solo work has taken maintain right here.
• JISOO has been slower to take off within the U.S. than her BLACKPINK cohorts, although her current digital EP AMORTAGE will get a lift with a bodily launch this Friday. Although she hasn’t but cracked the U.S. pop charts as a solo artist, songs like “Flower” and “Earthquake” have been enormous hits abroad. And, like her counterparts, she’s taken appearing and modeling roles alongside the best way.

Then, in fact, there’s BLACKPINK itself, which topped the Billboard 200 with its final album (Born Pink) and is ready to kick off a world tour in July. Between BLACKPINK’s many solo offshoots and the inevitable return of BTS, to say nothing of surefire future chart-toppers from different acts (Stray Youngsters, anybody?), Okay-pop guarantees to be one of many largest tales in music this yr.