Ariana Grande’s ‘Eternal Sunshine’ is the biggest album of 2024 so far

Ariana Grande’s highly anticipated new album, ‘Eternal Sunshine’, opens atop the latest Billboard chart with the biggest debut of the year so far, kicking off a season of anticipated blockbusters from Beyoncé, Taylor Swift and Dua Lipa.

“Eternal Sunshine,” Grande’s seventh studio album and her first in nearly four years, opens at No. 1 with the equivalent of 227,000 sales in the United States, including 195 million streams and 77,000 copies sold as a complete package, according to tracking service Luminate. After a lead single, “Yes, And?”, went to No. 1 in January, the full album arrived with Grande on “Saturday Night Live” and then – alongside Cynthia Erivo, her co-star in the upcoming two-parter “ Wicked” film – appears as a presenter at the Oscars.

“Eternal Sunshine” is Grande’s sixth No. 1 album. All of her studio LPs have gone to the top except for 2016’s “Dangerous Woman,” which was pushed to No. 2 by that year’s juggernaut, Drake’s “Views.”

Since her last album ‘Positions’ (2020), Grande has been adapting the Broadway musical ‘Bad”, in which she will play Glinda the Good. The film’s production was delayed first by the coronavirus and then by last year’s SAG-AFTRA strike; the first ‘Wicked’ film will now be released in November.

Grande’s first-week numbers are the best for any new album this year by quite a margin, surpassing Ye and Ty Dolla Sign’s “Vultures 1” (148,000). More big numbers are in store for Beyoncé’s country pivotal, “Cowboy Carter,” due out late this month; Swift’s ‘The Tortured Poets Department’, in April; and then Lipa’s ‘Radical Optimism’ in May.

Also this week, Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time,” which hit No. 1 for the 19th time last week, falls to No. 2. Noah Kahan’s “Stick Season” is No. 3, “Vultures 1” is No. 1. 4 and SZA’s “SOS” is #5.