(April 12, 2023). As if Pink Floyd’s iconic Dark Side of the Moon album needed another accolade to add to the half-century’s worth it’s already accumulated, here’s yet another.
On last week’s Billboard 200 album chart, the 50-year-old LP made history by leapfrogging back into the list’s top quartile—from No. 172 to 48–in its 977th total week on the survey.
Every week that this ambitious concept album spends on the chart is an extension of a record it’s held for decades.
It is now 978 weeks and counting on music’s premier ranking of the best-selling albums in the US, which makes Dark Side of the Moon far and away the longest charting album in Billboard’s history, with more than 200 weeks separating it from the nearest contender: Bob Marley’s Legend (777 weeks as of the latest chart dated April 15).
But what Dark Side also accomplished last week—during the buildup to the album’s 50th anniversary of topping the same list (a lone week ending April 28, 1973)—was nothing short of phenomenal, or at least interesting.
With the release of the album’s live version two weeks ago, Dark Side of the Moon: Live at Wembley 1974, both the original and the live version managed to sell enough copies in the tracking period between March 24-30 to move into the top 50 on the chart dated April 8, back-to-back at positions No. 48 and No. 49, respectively.
That gave Pink Floyd the odd distinction of being one of nine acts with at least two albums in the top quarter of the Billboard 200 in the same week…odd because none of the other eight acts were even born when Dark Side of the Moon was first released.
The other eight acts with multiple albums in the top 50 of last week’s chart were Taylor Swift with seven LPs in that upper quartile; country superstars Morgan Wallen and Luke Combs and pop/R&B megastar The Weeknd, each with three; and R&B/hip-hop mainstays SZA, Drake, Lil Baby and Kendrick Lamar, all with two albums apiece.
It also may have been the first time that an album and its live counterpart—with the songs tracked in the exact same sequence—were listed back-to-back in the top 50 of the Billboard 200 in the chart’s history.
It’s all the more noteworthy because when Pink Floyd first took Dark Side of the Moon to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 fifty years ago, the only act with more than one album in that week’s top 50 were the Beatles, with their twin greatest hits packages, 1962-1966 (Red) and 1967-70 (Blue), at Nos. 9 and 10, respectively.
The fact that so many artists are now able to place multiple albums in the chart’s upper tier at the same time is clearly a reflection of the changing times, as many of these acts’ fans continue to mine older products while enjoying the artists’ latest releases.
Streaming, of course, makes it that much easier as it just takes the click of a button on one’s smart device to access an artist’s earlier tracks (individual clicks of which now count towards the parent album’s chart points), whereas in the past, record labels usually stopped promoting an artist’s earlier releases once their “shelf lives” had expired, in many cases not stocking those albums on store shelves (or at least not prominently).
Another indicator of the benefit streaming has on older albums is this stat: in April 1973 when Dark Side topped the chart, none of the albums in the top 50 had been on the 200-position list for more than 33 weeks. On the current chart, 32 of the albums in the top 50 have been around longer, much longer in many cases.
A spot check of milestone anniversaries for that lone week at No. 1 for Dark Side further illustrates how the presence of so many artists with multiple album saturation at the top of the chart is a relatively new phenomenon.
On the tenth anniversary of Dark Side’s No. 1 ascension—on the Billboard 200 chart dated April 30, 1983–the only artist with two albums in that week’s top 50 was, oddly enough, synth pop musician Thomas Dolby, who was riding the popularity of his only US top-40 hit, “She Blinded Me With Science” (which appeared on both albums, one being an EP). He occupied positions 22 and 26 that week.
On the 25th anniversary of the crowning of Dark Side—chart dated April 25, 1998–the only act who managed to have two albums simultaneously in the top 50 were the Spice Girls, whose first two LPs were listed at Nos. 18 and 39.
And ten years ago, on the chart dated April 27, 2013, there were two artists with simultaneous top-50 albums: country singers Eric Church (5, 18) and Luke Bryan (15, 21).
Billboard began including streaming numbers in its album charts in December 2014. With streaming’s growth, the charts have taken on an increasingly different complexion, with recent years’ lists looking closer to today’s catalog-friendly charts than those of ten, twenty-five and fifty years ago.
Go back just one year, for example, to the chart dated April 30, 2022, and the circumstances were similar to what they are today.
There were nine acts on that list with two or more albums in the top 50–six musicians who make up the current set: Wallen, Swift, The Weeknd, Drake, Combs, and Lamar; plus three others: Bad Bunny, Juice WRLD, and Chris Stapleton.
Another artist—rapper Tyler, the Creator—narrowly missed making it an even ten that week when his then-nine-month-old album Call Me If You Get Lost rebounded from No. 120 to No. 1 after being re-released in vinyl configurations. That leap essentially pushed his older IGOR album from No. 50 where it was the week prior, to No. 51, moving him out of contention to join the list of other acts with simultaneous top-50 sets.
Which brings us back to the present day and one more bit of irony (involving Tyler, The Creator and Pink Floyd) for lovers of such things.
On the latest chart, Pink Floyd returns to more grounded territory as the original Dark Side falls to a more earthly No. 161 while the live version exits the Billboard 200 altogether after that lone week at No. 49.
With Pink Floyd’s departure from the upper region, there are still nine acts with two or more albums in the latest chart’s top 50.
Pink Floyd is replaced on the current list of nine this week by none other than Tyler, The Creator, whose albums Call Me If You Get Lost and IGOR both rebound into the top 50 at Nos. 3 (from 137) and 49 (from 69), respectively.
This time, Tyler’s rebound is attributed to a new deluxe edition of the nearly two-year-old Call Me If You Get Lost, which generated renewed interest in the equally resilient IGOR.
While the endurance of Call Me If You Get Lost is impressive, it can’t hold a candle to the remarkable staying power of the otherworldly Dark Side of the Moon.
Or as Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour might say to Tyler, “call me when you get to 978 weeks, or even better, 50 years.”
That’s 50 years…and still charting!
DJRob
DJRob (he/him/his), who discovered ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ as a freshman in college eleven years after its release, is a freelance music blogger from somewhere on the East Coast who covers R&B, hip-hop, pop and rock genres – plus lots of music news and current stuff! You can follow him on Twitter at @djrobblog.
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