David Byrne Achieves First Top 10 Album on Billboard 200 Chart With ‘American Utopia’
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David Byrne earns his highest charting album ever on the Billboard 200 chart as American Utopia enters at No. 3 with 63,000 equivalent album units earned in the week ending March 15, according to Nielsen Music.
The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption, which includes traditional album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). The new March 24-dated chart (where Byrne debuts at No. 3 and Logic’s Bobby Tarantino II starts at No. 1) will be posted in full on Billboard‘s websites on Tuesday, March 20.
Byrne’s debut — his 12th charting solo set — is driven by traditional album sales, as effectively all of its units were in pure sales, resulting in Byrne’s biggest sales week since Nielsen Music began tracking sales in 1991. American Utopia’s arrival was enhanced by sales generated from a concert ticket/album sale redemption offer with the artist’s tour, which started earlier in March.
American Utopia is Byrne’s first solo effort since 2004’s Grown Backwards, which debuted and peaked at No. 178. Since then, he’s released a trio of collaborative efforts: Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, with Brian Eno (No. 174 in 2009), Here Lies Love, with Fatboy Slim (No. 96, 2010) and Love This Giant, with St. Vincent (No. 23, 2012). The latter was Byrne’s highest charting album, and only top 40 set, until the arrival of American Utopia.
Byrne made his solo debut on the list in 1981 with The Catherine Wheel, which topped out at No. 104 in 1982.
The band Talking Heads, of which Byrne was a member, charted a dozen albums on the Billboard 200 between 1977 and 2009. Eight of them reached the top 40, with the act’s highest-charting effort being 1983’s Speaking in Tongues. The album reached No. 15, powered by its hit single “Burning Down the House.” The track was the band’s only top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100, climbing to No. 9.
Byrne’s new album was led by the single “Everybody’s Coming to My House,” which has reached No. 5 on the most recently published Adult Alternative Songs airplay chart (dated March 17).