SZA Rules Album Chart for Ninth Week, as Rihanna Reenters Top 10 and Paramore Roars In at No. 2
Thania Garcia Months after its Dec. 9 release, SZA’s “SOS” is still riding high. This week, the 23-song set tops the Billboard 200 for the ninth week — the highest tally for a female-led album in almost seven years. The last two albums by women to achieve nine or more weeks at the summit in the last decade were Adele’s “25,” which boasted 10 nonconsecutive weeks in 2015-16, and before that, Taylor Swift’s “1989” dominated for 11 weeks in 2014-15. In the week ending Feb. 16, SZA’s sophomore release earned 93,000 units in the U.S. and 127 million streams according to data by Luminate. Following Rihanna’s highly-anticpated return to the stage for the Super Bowl halftime set on Feb. 12, the star’s 2016 release “Anti” rebounded to No. 8 on the chart (from its prevous No. 50 position) with 36,000 album units sold. On Spotify, her streams spiked more than 640% across the U.S, while streams for the set’s opening track, “Bitch Better Have My Money,” surged by over 2,600%.