The first
HITS Top 50 of 2023 went down to the wire as we're projecting
Taylor Swift's
Midnights (
Republic) will beat
SZA's
SOS (
TDE/
RCA)
by a hair for #1. Swift's late-week surge in digital sales was enough to end SZA's three-week run atop the chart.
As always with a race so tight—the competitors are separated by a mere 200 units—expect a greater margin of error. We have
Midnights at 124.6k and
SOS finishing with 124.4k.
Swift and SZA's critically acclaimed albums, which have held #1 or #2 the past four weeks, have been maintaining weekly activity above 100k well past their release dates (10/21 for
Midnights, 12/9 for
SOS). It's a great start to the year and hopefully a sign of a changing tide after male-dominated 2022 chart action.
Republic has four of the top six titles on the year's premiere album chart as
Metro Boomin's
Heroes & Villains (
Boominati Worldwide) jumps to #3, followed by
Drake &
21 Savage's
Her Loss (
OVO) at #4 and
Mercury/
Big Loud's
Morgan Wallen at #6.
Streeting this week are new titles from
Motown's
YoungBoy Never Broke Again and
EMPIRE's
French Montana. See
the full chart while we grab a drink and research what this whole "dry January" thing is about.
