Justin Bieber is on top of the Billboard 200 chart at the moment for his new album, Changes. However, his reign is expected to be short-lived as BTS could peak at No. 1 when Billboard releases a new chart ranking next week.
Billboard confirmed that Bieber has smashed the record set by Elvis Presley as the youngest solo artist to achieve seven No. 1 albums at the Billboard 200 chart. Justin is, currently, 25 years old while Presley was 26 when he achieved the feat with his 1961 album, Blue Hawaii.
However, according to Billboard, if groups will be included in its calculation, all four members of The Beatles were younger than Bieber when they got their seventh No. 1 album in the chart. When the Fab Four released Rubber Soul on January 8, 1966, their oldest member Ringo Starr, was only 25 years, while the youngest member, George Harrison, was just 22 years.
Bieber released his new album, Changes, on February 14. It was the "Sorry" singer's first album in four years.
It sold 231,000 copies to peak at No. 1, the third-largest week of 2020 for an album. On top of the opening frame for this year were Eminem's Music to Be Murdered By with 279,000 and Halsey's Manic with 239,000.
Meanwhile, Bieber is unlikely to enjoy the top spot of the Billboard 200 chart for a long time as it is expected to be taken by BTS next week. The South Korean pop superstars dropped their latest album, Map of the Soul: 7, on February 21.
BTS is posed to grab not only another No. 1 on the Billboard 200 but also the largest opening frame of 2020 from Eminem. According to BTS label, Bit Hit Entertainment, Map of the Soul: 7 has recorded 4.02 million pre-orders worldwide, surpassing the group's own record of 2.68 million pre-orders for Map of the Soul: Persona. This makes BTS new LP the world's biggest-selling album since Ed Sheeran's Divide in 2017.
In addition, the Hanteo chart recorded over 2.6 million copies of Map of the Soul: 7 sold in its first day of sales. This is the highest number of sales BTS has ever recorded in a single day. Hanteo chart tracks the record of individual album sales from its approved record stores and websites.
BTS's new album also topped the iTunes download charts worldwide, making it almost certain to reach the top spot when Billboard collated the sales and streams in the US and UK charts at the end of the week. All of the LP's twenty tracks rose to the Top 20 of the US iTunes chart as soon as the album became available on the site.
So far, BTS has tied the record of The Beatles with three No. 1 albums at Billboard 200 in less than a year. The latest of which was Map of the Soul: Persona, which was released in April 2019.
