Taylor Swift, Juice WRLD Or Pop Smoke: Who Will Claim The No. 1 Album Next Week?

For the past six weeks, three titles have taken turns controlling the Billboard 200. Each time there was a clear winner, and it was easy to predict in advance who would own the coming frame…but that is not the case for this next period. At the moment, the No. 1 spot on the all-genre tally appears to be up for grabs, and a trio of efforts are competing for the highest rung on the most important ranking of the most-consumed releases in the country.

Three full-lengths—Taylor Swift’s Folklore, Juice WRLD’s Legends Never Die and Pop Smoke’s Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon—are all in the running for the Billboard 200’s throne, and any one of them could wind up the champion when Billboard announces the top 10 this coming Sunday (August 23). 

All three LPs have already spent time at No. 1, and interestingly, each subsequent release has lived atop the Billboard 200 for longer than the last. Smoke’s Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon only managed one turn in charge before relenting to WRLD’s Legends Never Die. That set held on for two frames before Swift’s latest blockbuster stormed in and took control. Since then, the folksy set has dominated the list for three consecutive weeks, but the time may soon come for it to begin its descent on the chart.

Music industry publication HitsDailyDouble is predicting that all three will manage to move somewhere between 80,000 and 90,000 equivalent units, though the tracking period is only halfway through, so those numbers could easily change by the week’s end. According to the outlet, Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon appears to be the frontrunner, but not by much. Once all the sales, streams, YouTube views and purchases of individual tracks have been counted, the three releases may only be separated by a few thousand units at most.

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Of the three, Swift’s Folklore is the biggest seller, and it continues to sell thousands of copies every week, and that trend won’t stop anytime soon. Both Legends Never Die and Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon rack up much grander stream counts every frame, and all those plays on sites like Apple Music and Spotify are helping them keep their songs on the Hot 100 as well.

While just three Folklore songs remain on the Hot 100 this week, five cuts from Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon are currently present, while seven tunes from Legends Never Die are holding on, including new single “Smile” with The Weeknd, which is the only top 10 hit from any of these releases at the moment.

The race is on between the three, but it’s a fairly low-stakes battle, as all three are already No. 1 titles, and none of them have anything left to prove at this point.

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