Alex Warren’s (left) “Atypical” continues to climb up the Billboard Scorching 100 chart. In the meantime Jack Black (proper) scores a stunning file with a really brief tune from A Minecraft Film.
Picture by Frazer Harrison/Getty Photographs for Stagecoach; Picture by Jerod Harris/Getty Photographs for Warner Bros. Discovery
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Picture by Frazer Harrison/Getty Photographs for Stagecoach; Picture by Jerod Harris/Getty Photographs for Warner Bros. Discovery
It is a sluggish week on the Billboard charts, but it surely’s nonetheless a giant week for Kendrick Lamar and SZA. Their collaboration “Luther” holds at No. 1 for a tenth consecutive week — considered one of solely 46 songs to take action in chart historical past — whereas SZA’s SOS and Lamar’s GNX sit at Nos. 1 and a couple of on the albums chart, respectively. However this week’s charts do characteristic an all-time file price noting, as a 34-second tune cracks the Scorching 100.
TOP ALBUMS
Final week, the rapper Ken Carson debuted atop the Billboard 200 albums chart with Extra Chaos, his first-ever chart-topper. And, although it was a sluggish week on the charts — Extra Chaos had the smallest accumulation of gross sales and streaming for any chart-topping album in three years — a No. 1 album is a No. 1 album.
Carson’s journey on the prime was short-lived, nevertheless. This week, Extra Chaos plunges from No. 1 to No. 38and with no main debuts to crash the social gathering — the very best debut of any album this week belongs to Wiz Khalifa, whose Kush + Orange Juice 2 bows at No. 62 — we’re left within the firm of the standard suspects.
Tourmates SZA and Kendrick Lamar have been sticking across the Billboard 200’s uppermost reaches all 12 months, and now SZA’s SOS and Kendrick Lamar’s GNX sit at Nos. 1 and a couple of, respectively — albeit with numbers even decrease than what Extra Chaos posted final week. Morgan Wallen is surging a bit (One Factor at a Time from No. 6 to No. 3 and Harmful: The Double Album from No. 14 to No. 9), which is no surprise given the pending arrival of his new album. However in any other case, there is not a lot motion to talk of, till you get to…
…No. 10, the place Grammy-winning rapper Doechii vaults into the Prime 10 for the primary time in her profession. Alligator Bites By no means Heal leaps from No. 24 to No. 10 because of a mix of things: The viral “Nervousness” continues to be booming on the Scorching 100 — it rises from No. 14 to No. 12 this week — whereas “Denial Is a River” continues to be floating round within the prime 50 after peaking at No. 21 earlier this 12 months. The larger issue, although, is that the album obtained two new vinyl editions (accessible solely at Goal and City Outfitters), in addition to its first-ever CD.
TOP SONGS
One byproduct of the streaming period is that blockbuster songs are posting ever-longer streaks at No. 1. Simply final 12 months, Shaboozey’s “A Bar Tune (Tipsy)” tied an all-time file with 19 weeks atop the Scorching 100 — and that tune, many months later, nonetheless sits at No. 5. So it should not come as an enormous shock that Kendrick Lamar’s “Luther (feat. SZA)” is at No. 1 for a tenth consecutive week. But it surely faces looming competitors from two completely different instructions.
The best menace to the reign of “Luther” is most probably Alex Warren’s “Atypical,” which appears arrange for long-term (maybe even Shaboozey-level long-term) chart success. The tune rises from No. 5 to No. 3 this week, because of a surge in each airplay and streaming; it is now No. 1 on Billboard’s streaming chart and nonetheless has tons of room to maneuver as extra radio stations’ program administrators — who typically comply with the lead of streaming today — add it to their rotations.
At this level, it would not require a fantastic present of prognostication to recommend that you will hear this tune in all places this summer time: at weddings, on the radio, on TikTok, by way of your streaming algorithms and so forth. You want heart-on-their-sleeve singer-songwriters like Lewis Capaldi? Choir-addicted uplift retailers like Coldplay? Rock-adjacent earworm farmers like Think about Dragons? You are gonna love this tune. You in all probability already do. You is perhaps listening to it this very prompt, as you learn this.
The opposite main looming menace to “Luther” comes from nation sensation Morgan Wallen, who’s no stranger to the “tune of the summer time” dialog, given the dominance of “Final Night time” and “I Had Some Assist” in recent times. Wallen will launch I am the Downside on Could 16, however this week he extends a outstanding file: With the discharge of his Submit Malone collaboration “I Ain’t Coming Again” — the 2 collaborated on “I Had Some Assist” simply final 12 months — he is now landed six pre-release singles from I am the Downside within the prime 10 within the run-up to the discharge. The earlier file, held by Submit Malone and Taylor Swift, was 4.
At this level, there’s not a scintilla of doubt that the 37-song I am the Downside might be a blockbuster. But it surely stays unclear whether or not anyone new Wallen monitor will take off as dramatically as “Final Night time” or “I Had Some Assist” did, given how a lot his new songs are competing with each other.
Wallen at the moment has 5 songs within the Scorching 100’s prime 20: “I am the Downside,” which jumps from No. 10 to No. 7; “I Ain’t Coming Again,” which debuts at No. 8; “Simply in Case,” which slides from No. 11 to No. 14; “I Had Some Assist,” which climbs from No. 17 to No. 15 after practically a 12 months on the chart; and “Love Any individual,” which ticks up from No. 20 to No. 17. That is a powerful pile-up of hits, however followers can solely stream one factor at a time.
WORTH NOTING
The rise of TikTok has sophisticated life for individuals who compile Billboard’s chart rankings. In spite of everything, TikTok reputation typically leads and contributes to success on the pop charts. But it surely’s tough to check streams of tune fragments to streams of full songs.
In fact, TikTok has modified the music business in different methods, to the purpose the place some analysts have gone as far as to (very prematurely) predict that the app’s rise would result in unusually brief songs — not mere excerpts, however songs themselves — changing the three- and four-minute bangers that routinely spherical out the Scorching 100.
Setting apart the occasional blockbuster that clocks in at lower than two minutes — lookin’ at you, pre-Billy Ray Cyrus model of “Previous City Highway” — that prediction hasn’t come to move. However there’s a brand-new all-time file, set throughout this exceptionally sluggish week on the Billboard charts, for the shortest-ever tune to hit the Billboard Scorching 100. (The Scorching 100 dates again to August 1958.)
The tune? “Steve’s Lava Rooster” by Jack Black, from A Minecraft Film. (Black, who stars within the movie as Steve, co-wrote the tune with director Jared Hess.) Its size? Extremely, solely 34 seconds, although there’s a remix that drags it out to 1:22which is basically a rock opera by comparability. The tune’s debut chart place this week? No. 78.
“Steve’s Lava Rooster” is not Black’s first tune to crack the Scorching 100; that might be “The Decide of Future,” by his band Tenacious D, which additionally hit No. 78 again in 2006. And it isn’t the highest-charting hit of Black’s profession; actually, “Steve’s Lava Rooster” is not even the highest-charting tune Black has sung in a kid-friendly film franchise. That will be “Peaches,” which hit No. 56 on the power of Black’s flip as Bowser in 2023’s The Tremendous Mario Bros. Film. (That tune’s runtime was a relatively exhausting 1:35.)
It seems that, whereas a 34-second runtime constitutes an all-time file — no less than till Taylor Swift begins dabbling in skits — it is really the third sub-1:00 tune to crack the Scorching 100. With a nod of appreciation to Gary Belief at Billboard and Paul Haney of Joel Whitburn’s Report Analysislisted below are the 5 shortest songs ever to hit Billboard’s major singles chart:
Jack Black, “Steve’s Lava Rooster,” 0:34, No. 78 (2025)Child Cudi, “Lovely Journey,” 0:37, No. 100 (2020)Pikotaro, “PPAP (Pen-Pineapple-Apple-Pen),” 0:45, No. 77 (2016)The Womenfolk, “Little Bins,” 1:02, No. 83 (1964)Nat King Cole, “Deck the Halls,” 1:06, No. 16 (launched in 1960, peaked in 2022)
For these trying to sport out the chart way forward for “Steve’s Lava Rooster,” “Peaches” spent a complete of 5 weeks on the Scorching 100 and even accrued a little bit of Oscar buzz. And, although “Peaches” didn’t make the minimize for the Academy’s 15-track greatest unique tune shortlist that 12 months, Black should not lose all hope for the awards way forward for “Steve’s Lava Rooster.” In spite of everything, there is not any rule that claims a 34-second tune cannot win an Oscar.
