‘The Weekend’ Has the Best Week Ever!

 The album starts with a whopping 412,000 equivalent album units earned in the week ending Sept. 3, according to Nielsen Music. Of that sum, 326,000 were pure album sales (his best sales week ever).

With the arrival, The Weeknd earns the second-largest overall weekly unit total and pure sales week for an album this year, behind only the debut of Drake’s If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late (535,000 units; 495,000 in album sales).

The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week based on multi-metric consumption, which includes traditional album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). The new Sept. 19-dated chart (where The Weeknd is No. 1) will be posted in full to Billboard’s Web sites on Wednesday, Sept. 9 (a day later than normal, due to the Labor Day holiday).

Beauty Behind the Madness was released through XO/Republic Records on Aug. 28 and is the third consecutive top 10 album for The Weeknd, whose real name is Abel Tesfaye. It follows 2012’s Trilogy (it debuted and peaked at No. 4) and 2013’s Kiss Land (a No. 2 debut/peak). The new album was led by three hit singles that have all reached the top five of the Billboard Hot 100 chart: “Earned It” (initially from the Fifty Shades of Grey soundtrack; the song peaked at No. 3), “Can’t Feel My Face” (No. 1 for two weeks) and “The Hills” (climbing to a new peak of No. 4 on the Sept. 12-dated chart).

Billboard 

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