NEW YORK (NYTIMES) - Is Bad Bunny the new Bruno?
Bad Bunny, aka Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio, the Puerto Rican superstar who just rocked New York's Yankee Stadium for two nights, has clinched a ninth week at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart for his latest release, Un Verano Sin Ti, tying Disney's Encanto (2021) soundtrack for the most times at the top this year.
Un Verano Sin Ti had the equivalent of 105,000 sales in the United States last week, including 144 million streams, according to Luminate, the tracking service that supplies the data for Billboard's charts.
In the 16 weeks since it came out, Un Verano has bounced in and out of the top spot but never fallen lower than No. 2.
Encanto - the source of We Don't Talk About Bruno, the inescapable viral smash of early 2022 - had a near-consecutive run at No. 1, missing it only once.
Although no track from Un Verano has gone higher than No. 4 on the Hot 100 singles chart, the album as a whole has been a streaming blockbuster.
Songs from it have racked up about 2.9 billion clicks so far in the US, and the full album has garnered 2.1 million equivalent sales, a composite figure that incorporates popularity on multiple formats, including streams and sales.
At the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday night, Bad Bunny, 28, was named Artiste of the Year, and the broadcast carried his performance of Titi Me Pregunto from Yankee Stadium, where the stage was filled with prop palm trees and the Puerto Rican and Dominican flags.
Besides Bad Bunny and Encanto, the only title with a longer run at No. 1 in recent years is American country singer Morgan Wallen's Dangerous: The Double Album, which notched 10 consecutive times at the top in the first part of 2021 and has remained a steady hit.
It lands at No. 4 on the latest chart, in its 85th week out.
American rapper Rod Wave's Beautiful Mind, last week's top seller, falls to No. 2, while pop superstar Beyonce's Renaissance holds at No. 3 and English singer Harry Styles' Harry's House is No. 5.