Credit: Universal Pictures/YouTube
Entertainment Ariana Grande Cynthia Erivo Film Wicked

Omg, the Wicked soundtrack just broke an absolutely insane record in its first week

Safe to say it's pretty 'pop-u-lar'

Ellissa Bain
2nd December 2024, 17:04
Add as preferred source on Google
Add as preferred source on Google

It looks like everyone is screaming “Defying Gravity” at the top of their lungs this week because the Wicked soundtrack has just broken a huge record. 

The album contains all 12 songs from the new movie, including “No One Mourns the Wicked”, “What Is This Feeling?” and “A Sentimental Man”. 

In its first week, the soundtrack has shot straight in at number two on the Billboard 200, just losing out to Kendrick Lamar’s new album GNX.

That’s pretty insane for a musical soundtrack, and Wicked has just earned the highest debut for a big-screen adaptation of a stage musical EVER.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DDDIv4dTnfl/

“Wicked logs the biggest week for any stage-to-screen musical soundtrack since the Billboard 200 began ranking titles by equivalent album units in December 2014,” Billboard said. 

It had 139,000 equivalent album units in the week ending November 28, which is the biggest week for a full-length theatrical film soundtrack since A Star Is Born. 

Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper’s musical earned 143,000 units in its second week in October 2018.

Album units is a measurement that includes both physical album sales and streaming. It works out how many albums would need to have been sold to get the same streaming revenue.

That 139,000 album units consists of an impressive 85,000 pure album sales and 67.66 million official streams of the album’s tracks on streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music. 

Wicked has also had 2024’s biggest streaming week for any soundtrack, and the largest streaming week ever for a stage-to-screen musical film soundtrack.

This crazy record was helped by the fact it’s available on six different vinyls, including an edition signed by Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo, as well as four CD versions and the normal digital download.

What a huge achievement!

For more like this and for the latest memes, quizzes, updates and general pop culture chaos – like The Tab on Facebook.

Featured image by: Universal Pictures/YouTube