Lady Gaga did everything right with the lead up to her brand new album, Joanne, and it certainly paid off in the end. With a solid lead single, great promotional tracks, and an intimate dive bar tour to showcase new material, Joanne debuted at number one on the album charts this week, making the record her fourth number one full-length.
The album hits the top spot with an impressive mark of 201,000 equivalent album units earned, which is good enough to be the fourth largest debut this year behind acts like Drake and Beyonce. In terms of actual album sales, 170,000 were traditional sales, making it the seventh largest debut in 2016. It compares fairly well to the performance of her 2013 record, ARTPOP, which had first week numbers of 258,000.
All of the sales that Joanne earned are well warranted, because Lady Gaga clearly went all out in the making of what is easily her best album to date. Her reign isn’t going to stop there, either: she was recently announced as a performer for the upcoming American Music Awards, where she’ll be taking her songs from a dive bar and moving them to the big stage.
To top it all off, Joanne’s debut makes Lady Gaga the only female artist to have four albums at number one in the 2010’s. Pretty impressive, eh?