Record sales may be down, and the music industry continues to hurt, but people will still shell out cash money for some artists. Like Lady Gaga. Especially if her album is technically the soundtrack to the number two movie in America. Which is all to say that, as per EW, the A Star is Born album is now the No. 1 album in America.
The soundtrack to the movie — the fourth iteration of a story first filmed in 1937, though a terribly similar film was made five years prior in the form of What Price Hollywood? — became Gaga’s fifth ever No. 1 album. Every record since her 2008 debut, The Fame (which “only” hit number two), has done to the top of the charts: Born This Way, Artpop, Cheek to Cheek (her duet album with Tony Bennett), and Joanne.
Granted, the A Star Is Born soundtrack isn’t all Gaga. Her co-star Bradley Cooper warbles, too, sometimes with her, sometimes solo. The movie, meanwhile, is still raking in gobs of cash; in its second weekend, it slipped only 37% to nab $28 million, for a total-so-far of $94 million — which is seriously not bad at all for a movie that’s neither a superhero outing or a cartoon about farting animals.
Gaga’s streak makes her the female artist with the most number one albums in this decade. It ties her with Future, J. Cole, and one Kanye West. Drake has the most No. 1 albums, with a whopping eight, and Justin Bieber is one ahead of her, with six.
Though the 1937 A Star Is Born was about Hollywood, as was the 1954 remake with Judy Garland and James Mason, starting with the latter, the story began to focus on music. The Garland-Mason version features the former as a musical theater star, à la Garland herself, who belts out songs like “The Man That Got Away” and “It’s a New World.” The 1976 version, with Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson, relocates the setting to the music biz. It produced a No. 1 hit record, too.
(Via EW)
