As the late, great Jessica Walter once said, “Good for her!” Olivia Rodrigo earned her second No. 1 song on the Billboard Hot 100, not to mention second No. 1 debut, with “good 4 u,” her third single off new album Sour. That makes the album — which came out on May 21 and is heading toward a sweet No. 1 debut on next week’s Billboard 200 — the first-ever debut album to be preceded by two No. 1 debuts, never mind two No. 1s, period. The only previous albums to include two songs that debuted at No. 1 were Mariah Carey’s Daydream, Drake’s Scorpion, and Ariana Grande’s thank u, next — each the artist’s fifth, Billboard noted. “good 4 u” hits No. 1 largely thanks to a big streaming week, with 43.2 million American streams. Previously, Rodrigo’s runaway hit “drivers license” became the first debut single to debut at No. 1.
Elsewhere on the Hot 100, this week’s chart had the most top-ten debuts ever, with five. The other four were off J. Cole’s new album The Off-Season: “m y . l i f e” with 21 Savage and Morray at No. 2, “a m a r i” at No. 5, “p r i d e . i s . t h e . d e v i l” with Lil Baby at No. 6, and “9 5 . s o u t h” at No. 8. The No. 2 for “m y . l i f e” is Cole’s highest-ever chart position, while the four-song set made Cole just the fourth artist ever to debut four songs in the top ten, after Drake, Lil Wayne, and Juice WRLD. Last week, Cole’s The Off-Season single “i n t e r l u d e” debuted at No. 8, meaning The Off-Season doubled his career top-ten songs from five to ten. But J. Cole’s real record-setting happened over on the Billboard 200, where the rapper logged his sixth-straight No. 1 album with The Off-Season. The album earned 282,000 equivalent units, the most for a hip-hop album so far this year, and also logged the biggest streaming debut of any album this year, with 325.05 million on-demand streams of the 12-track album. It’s Cole’s fifth album to debut at No. 1, after KOD, 4 Your Eyez Only, 2014 Forest Hills Drive, and Cole World: The Sideline Story; his sophomore album, Born Sinner, debuted at No. 2 and rose to No. 1 in its second week. And this time, likely to the chagrin of some fans, he accomplished it all with features.
