After almost two years, SZA’s ‘SOS’ rockets again to the highest of the album chart : NPR

It is a colossal week for outdated music on this week’s Billboard charts, as years- or decades-old vacation songs fill the Sizzling 100’s high 16 spots — in addition to 23 of the highest 25. Mariah Carey closes in on an all-time report she’s nearly sure to in the future possess. The albums chart is equally larded with historical titles, with vacation crooners (together with Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and their no-good stepson, Michael Bublé) in every single place you flip within the high 10. Even the brand new No. 1 album is one thing of an oldie.

TOP SONGS

It is value taking a second to acknowledge simply how drastically streaming has modified the chart panorama, significantly right here on the finish of December. Earlier than Mariah Carey’s “All I Need for Christmas Is You” lastly hit the highest 5 in 2018 — keep in mind, the music got here out in 1994 — a grand complete of one vacation music had achieved that feat within the historical past of the Billboard Sizzling 100, which dates again to 1958. (That observe: “The Chipmunk Music” by The Chipmunks with David Seville, which hit No. 1 in December 1958.) To today, solely eight vacation songs have ever hit the Sizzling 100’s high 5, a testomony to each the recency of the vacations’ chart dominance and the immovability of the tracks close to the highest of the chart.

This week, the highest 16 songs are all vacation perennials. A yr in the past at the moment, vacation songs stuffed the highest eight slots — and that was a report on the time. Eight years in the past this week, there have been two vacation songs within the high 25: “All I Need for Christmas Is You” at No. 16 and Pentatonix’s “Hallelujah” at No. 23. (Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” is not actually a vacation music, however Pentatonix launched its cowl on A Pentatonix Christmas, so we’re counting it with an asterisk.) This week, there are simply two non-holiday songs within the high 25: Woman Gaga and Bruno Mars’ “Die With a Smile” at No. 17 and Shaboozey’s “A Bar Music (Tipsy)” at No. 24. (Search for these two titles to duke it out for No. 1 subsequent week.)

The supremacy of “All I Need for Christmas Is You” — it is No. 1 for a fourth straight week, which supplies it 18 weeks total, gathered a number of weeks at a time because it first topped the chart in 2019 — has it properly positioned to interrupt the all-time report for weeks at No. 1 in December 2025. “A Bar Music (Tipsy)” actually has a little bit of life left in it, however for now, it and Lil Nas X’s 2019 music “Previous City Highway (feat. Billy Ray Cyrus)” stay tied for the all-time report with 19 weeks. If “All I Need for Christmas Is You” hasn’t topped the chart for no less than two extra weeks a yr from now, that’ll be a large upset.

Rounding out the highest 10: a terrific huge moldering sack of oldies which have since been loaded into a large chest freezer within the nation’s storage, to be thawed out someday round subsequent Thanksgiving: Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Across the Christmas Tree” (holding at No. 2), Wham!’s “Final Christmas” (holding at No. 3), Bobby Helms’ “Jingle Bell Rock” (holding at No. 4), Ariana Grande’s “Santa Inform Me” (lords-a-leaping from No. 9 to No. 5), Burl Ives’ “A Holly Jolly Christmas” (dipping from No. 5 to No. 6), Andy Williams’ “It is the Most Fantastic Time of the Yr” (holding at No. 7), Dean Martin’s “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” (holding at No. 8), Kelly Clarkson’s “Beneath the Tree” (up from No. 10 to a brand new chart peak at No. 9) and Nat King Cole’s “The Christmas Music (Merry Christmas to You),” which climbs from No. 14 to No. 10.

In the event you’re searching for one thing value noting within the previous paragraph — in addition to the truth that somebody on the market wished on a monkey’s paw that Andy Williams would by no means depart us — it is that “Santa Inform Me” is an official, totally vested member of the Christmas Canon. Ariana Grande’s presence in Depraved absolutely helped, as did a bodily launch to have fun the music’s tenth anniversary. However when a decade-old observe has the juice to surpass “A Holly Jolly Christmas” (a lot to the consternation of the unruly Ives Hive), it isn’t going anyplace for a loooooong time.

TOP ALBUMS

We owe SZA a terrific debt: Had she not surprise-released a deluxe version of her colossal 2022 album SOS on Dec. 20, you’d at present be studying about Michael Bublé’s cold blockbuster Christmas returning to No. 1 on the Billboard 200. As an alternative, you get to witness the triumph of a terrific — albeit supersized to the purpose of unwieldiness — version of SOS, titled SOS Deluxe: LANA.

SOS was a chart powerhouse even earlier than its growth: It debuted atop the Billboard 200 close to the top of 2022 earlier than wrapping up a run of 10 weeks atop the chart in early 2023. Particular person songs had been equally profitable, with 5 of them hitting the highest 10 and “Snooze” sticking round on the Sizzling 100 for the whole thing of 2023. But SZA has solely appeared to achieve momentum since SOS‘s launch; simply final week, she was nonetheless within the high 10 along with her featured efficiency in “Luther,” a spotlight of Kendrick Lamar’s new album GNX. (If it weren’t for vacation songs, that observe would nonetheless reside at No. 3 on the Sizzling 100.)

SOS has by no means left the highest 20 since its launch, which provides as much as greater than two years of chart relevance for the album, which started its life as a 23-song epic. Now that SOS‘s deluxe version sports activities a whopping 38 songs — with stories suggesting that extra tracks can be added shortly — a recent spherical of streaming exercise has despatched the album roaring again to No. 1.

Including to its preliminary run on the high of the charts in late 2022 and early 2023, that is SOS‘s eleventh nonconsecutive week at No. 1. No album within the historical past of the Billboard 200 — which dates again to 1956 — has ever posted an extended hole between stints at No. 1. In fact, this explicit taste of flex, the place artists launch “deluxe editions” of already-successful albums with piles of bonus tracks, is a comparatively new phenomenon. (So is streaming itself, within the grand scheme of issues.)

Nonetheless, Billboard did a little bit of math and decided, primarily based largely on streaming, that these 15 new tracks — had they been launched as a free-standing album — would have hit No. 1 on their very own. Regardless, SZA has blocked Michael Bublé and different vacation titans from getting a transparent shot on the high spot. Bublé’s Christmas rises from No. 5 to No. 2, whereas Bing Crosby’s supersized 2024 compilation Final Christmas jumps from No. 6 to No. 3. (That is Crosby’s highest chart place since 1959.) Nat King Cole’s The Christmas Music matches its personal chart peak, because it leaps from No. 11 to No. 4.

Lamar’s GNX tumbles from No. 2 to No. 5, Mariah Carey’s Merry Christmas jumps from No. 10 to No. 6 as listeners uncover it accommodates greater than only one music, Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Division slides from No. 3 to No. 7, the Depraved soundtrack slips from No. 7 to No. 8, the basic girl-group compilation A Christmas Reward for You From Phil Spector leaps from No. 16 to No. 9 and Frank Sinatra’s Final Christmas climbs from No. 17 to No. 10. Subsequent week, search for all however SZA, Kendrick, Taylor and Depraved to get crammed into the Christmas crawl house till late November.

WORTH NOTING

As famous above, the streaming period has radically remodeled the Billboard charts, whereas additionally giving us a clearer-than-ever sense of which songs have graduated into the Christmas-music canon. (Hope you want ’em old school, cheerful and unambiguous!) It is grow to be potential to foretell, with a good bit of certainty, which songs will hit the highest 5 each vacation season, and in what order, with solely minor fluctuations from week to week. However whenever you look over the charts from the top of every yr, you do begin to get a way of which songs are rising — and fading.

Simply final week, two comparatively recent-vintage songs — Ariana Grande’s 2014 observe “Santa Inform Me” and Kelly Clarkson’s “Beneath the Tree,” from 2013 — hit the highest 10 for the very first time. There’s ample proof that these songs have year-over-year momentum, on condition that they’d spent latest vacation seasons hovering between No. 11 and No. 20. Equally, it is easy to identify gradual (if seemingly glacial) chart development for Wham!’s “Final Christmas,” which peaked at No. 9 in 2020, No. 5 in 2022 and No. 3 this yr. And sure, sigh, Michael Bublé can also be creeping up on us: His 2011 cowl of “It is Starting To Look A Lot Like Christmas” hit No. 12 this previous week, surpassing its earlier peak of No. 19.

However charts additionally signify basic math, and to ensure that songs to rise, others should fall. Bublé’s momentum appears to have helped diminish, nonetheless barely, Perry Como’s 1951 model of “It is Starting to Look a Lot Like Christmas, which has charted as excessive as No. 12 however topped out at No. 16 this yr. (It should be robust for Como to compete with Bublé, on condition that the latter’s whole elevator pitch appears to include the phrases, “Perry Como, however alive.”)

Different old-as-dirt vacation songs have been on downward trajectories lately. José Feliciano’s 1970 chestnut “Feliz Navidad” has been a mainstay within the high 10 throughout a number of completely different streaming-era Decembers, however topped out at No. 11 this yr. Gene Autry & The Pinafores’ 1949 rendition of “Rudolph the Crimson-Nosed Reindeer” peaked at No. 16 in 2020, No. 28 in 2022 and No. 30 this season — every time surpassed by an ever-greater variety of vacation hits.

Wanting over the ultimate Vacation 100 chart of the 2024-25 season, you get a transparent sense of the present canon, so as — and you’ll see the place once-dominant songs have drifted additional and farther from present-day vacation playlists. Lately, common discourse surrounding Band Support’s 1984 hit “Do They Know It is Christmas?” has highlighted the charity music’s condescension, in addition to its misunderstanding of how extensively Christianity (and snow) has proliferated in Africa. As a probable end result, the music has grow to be one thing of a chart afterthought, stalling out at No. 52 on The Vacation 100 this week.

Others fade for causes which might be more durable to discern. There’s nice affection on the market — no less than in some circles — for Bruce Springsteen’s vein-bursting rendition of “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to City.” However the music, which has risen as excessive as No. 16 on Billboard‘s Vacation 100 in earlier years, is languishing at No. 49 this week. Equally, the Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s much-jammed “Christmas Eve (Sarajevo 12/24)” has resided on the Vacation 100 for all 73 weeks of its existence, and has charted as excessive as No. 4, however at present sits at No. 46.

There’s significantly much less affection on the market for Elmo & Patsy’s 1979 novelty music “Grandma Acquired Run Over By a Reindeer,” which routinely hit No. 1 on Billboard‘s Christmas Hits chart — a predecessor to The Vacation 100 — within the ’80s and peaked at No. 87 on the Sizzling 100 in a pre-streaming period that significantly de-emphasized vacation songs. The observe hasn’t sniffed the Vacation 100 in years.

For these of us who’ve lived by that music’s ’80s omnipresence, that has to rely as a fairly sizable blessing.