There was never any question about which title would sit atop this week's Billboard 200 albums chart.
The K-pop juggernaut BTS recently returned from a nearly four-year hiatus, during which its members released solo projects and completed mandatory military service in South Korea. The group's comeback album, Arirang, debuts at No. 1 this week, thanks in large part to sales of roughly 532,000 copies — including 208,000 on vinyl alone. Arirang's total "equivalent album units" figure for the week, which represents a mix of sales and streaming, landed at a whopping 641,000, the most for any album in one week so far this year.
BTS was bound to put up splashy numbers in its first week back, but it's still worth noting how much the K-pop landscape changed during its absence. The genre has made huge inroads in the U.S., as other K-pop acts have continued to top the charts and last year's KPop Demon Hunters became a pop-culture powerhouse. Seven of the K-pop boy band Stray Kids' eight No. 1 entries on the Billboard 200 have come out since the last time BTS topped that chart, less than four years ago. The ground on which BTS stands has shifted substantially.
Still, the numbers for Arirang demonstrate that the group's power over the charts has only grown in its absence. The album's chart numbers mark the biggest for any record since the colossal debut week of Taylor Swift's The Life of a Showgirl last fall — and the biggest sales week for a group since One Direction's Midnight Memories sold 547,000 copies in its first week on the charts back in 2013.
Of course, BTS's sales numbers got a boost from a wide variety of available physical editions — 17 on vinyl and nine on CD — but that's standard operating procedure these days. First-week sales of more than half a million copies? That's still astounding for any artist not named Taylor Swift, and that's not even getting into its robust streaming numbers. Consider just a handful of the artists who've released blockbuster albums without selling 500,000 copies in one week since the last time BTS put out an album: The Weeknd, Travis Scott, Sabrina Carpenter, Harry Styles, Beyoncé, Drake, SZA, Kendrick Lamar, Bad Bunny … even the newest Morgan Wallen record didn't clear 500,000 in its first week, and that record's been unstoppable ever since.
BTS's success extends to the Hot 100 singles chart, as well, as "Swim" — the first single from Arirang, released concurrently with the album — debuts at No. 1. It's the seventh BTS song to top the Hot 100 and first since 2021, though two BTS members — Jimin and Jung Kook — have hit No. 1 as solo acts during that time.
"Swim" will need to build momentum to stay at No. 1 for long, however. It debuts at No. 2 on the streaming chart and No. 18 on Radio Songs, but tops the Hot 100 easily due to first-week sales of 154,000 copies. That's a tremendous number, but it won't carry over into future chart weeks.
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