The Rolling Stones notch up 37th Top 10 album in the US

While The Rolling Stones’ new blues set Blue & Lonesome debuted at #1 in Australia and Britain, it only entered the US Billboard charts at #4 with 123,000 equivalent album sales units.

They were beaten by The Hamilton Mixtape which debuted at #1 with first week sales of 169,000. The Weeknd’s Starboy was at #2 with 151,000 units and Pentatonix’s A Pentatonix Christmas slipped in at third spot with 128,000.

Billboard reported that Blue & Lonesome is the Stones’ 37th Top 10 album Stateside. No other act in history has had more Top 10 album chart entries in the US. The second on the list is Barbra Streisand, with 34.

The magazine also noted that the Stones shifting over 120,000 units in its first week of sale has some positives. It’s a good performance for an album of covers. Coming ten years after A Bigger Bang, it shows there is still an audience for freshly-recorded material for the veteran act.

It also pointed out that 120,000 is not a bad effort given that US recorded music sales have dropped by 61% between 2005 and 2015.

If Blue & Lonesome had repeated its Australian and British chart topping debut in the US, it would have been their tenth #1 in those regions. 

Their other American chart toppers were Out of Our Heads (1965), Sticky Fingers (1971), Exile On Main Street (1972), Goat’s Head Soup (1973), It’s Only Rock’n’Roll (1974), Black And Blue (1976), Some Girls (1978), Emotional Rescue (1980) and Tattoo You (1981).