Elite 100: The Weeknd Hits No. 3; Christmas Music Spikes

Two longtime patterns for the week after Thanksgiving seem to be holding up this year: It was a slow week for new releases and Christmas music’s popularity shot through the roof.

Aside for a new song from The Weeknd and new projects from Fabolous and Prince, the former certainly seems to be holding true for this week’s Elite 100 Artists chart. 

The Weeknd’s new single “Blinding Lights” no doubt propelled him to a chart-leading 48,100 song sales for the week. He also earned 87.4 million on-demand streams and 1,400 album sales, good enough to get him to No. 3 overall on the chart with 77,300 total album units. 

The Weeknd has taken 2019 off from the road, as in 2018 he was a fixture at major festivals U.S. like Coachella, Summerfest, Panorama, Lollapalooza and Festival d’été de Québec. 

The last time he did a proper tour, in 2017, the singer came in at No. 16 on Pollstar’s Top 100 Worldwide Tours chart. He reported $80 million grossed on 991,694 tickets that year on a tour that was booked by WME.

Another artist riding a new release this week was Fabolous, whose Summertime Shootout 3: Coldest Summer Ever project dropped Nov. 29. The artist got to No. 25 for the week with a solid mix of album sales (5,000), song sales (10,600) and on-demand streams (43.6 million). 

Fabolous is scheduled to perform at the Masters of Ceremony show at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center Dec. 13 and V101 Heart Of Hip Hop radio show in Sacramento March 28. 

It’s been awhile since Fab reported a full headline tour, but his show with Statik Selektah at Paradise Rock Club in Boston Sept. 6 drew a capacity crowd of 953 and grossed $40,555. Boston seems to be a particularly strong market for him, as a show with Jadakiss at House Of Blues Boston in 2017 grossed $106,686 on 1,873 tickets. Fab also toured with Chris Brown earlier that year. 

The posthumous release of the Super Deluxe Edition of Prince’s 1999 no doubt helped propel The Artist to the No. 96 spot for the week. His strongest metric was album sales, of which he logged 13,800. 

Prince’s library of unreleased music is known to be voluminous, and after Prince’s estate and Sony Music Entertainment inked a deal in 2018, more new music is likely to be coming in future years. 

The other trend, that has been materializing since early November but has finally hit with full force is the sudden spike in demand for Christmas Music. Not only have modern holiday favorites like Pentatonix (No. 9) and Michael Bublé (No. 10) surged to the top of the chart, but popular holiday standards are driving up listens for the likes of Frank Sinatra (No. 15), Mariah Carey (No. 16), Nat King Cole (No. 33), Elvis Presley (No. 41), Dean Martin (No. 43), Andy Williams (No. 49), Vince Guaraldi (No. 59), Idina Menzel – who also released a version of “I’ll Be Home For Christmas Dec. 6 – (No. 60), Perry Como (No. 64), Gene Autry (No. 79), Burl Ives (No. 92), and Brenda Lee (No. 95).

Next week’s chart will include data for new releases from The Who, Mary J. Blige, Iggy Azalea, Blueface, XXXTentacion (posthumous), Fat Joe, Roddy Ricch, Jack Peñate, and The Comet Is Coming.

Also be on the lookout this week for new projects from Harry Styles, Blake Shelton, Stormzy, Free Nationals, and Ja Rule.