Ariana Grande‘s latest album, Thank U, Next, has only been out for a week, but it’s already breaking major records. Billboard reports that Thank U, Next was the top-selling album of last week, with 360,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. That makes Thank U, Next the highest-selling pop album on the chart in over a year, and marks Grande’s second number-one on the Billboard 200 in less than six months. (Sweetener was released on August 18, 2018.)
Grande has also broken the record for the number-one streaming week for any pop album ever. Billboard reports that Thank U, Next racked up 307 million on-demand streams in its first week of tracking, the most streams any pop album has gotten during a single week. That’s almost double the previous record, Ed Sheeran’s Divide. Thank U, Next also beats Cardi B‘s record for the biggest streaming week for an album by a woman.
The singer’s record-breaking week cements what we already know — Grande is the biggest pop star of the contemporary moment. Last year, Grande said that she wished she could release her music like a rapper, unbound by album cycles and exhausting promotion. With the ninth-biggest streaming week of all time, joined in the top ten by Drake, Post Malone, and J. Cole, Grande has granted her own wish.
