"Dark Matter" and its tracks on the charts

JimFletcherPearlJam said:

All 11 Pearl Jam studio albums have reached the top five on the Billboard 200 chart. Two of them, Riot Act and Gigaton, debuted at number five. The other nine albums were either first or second on the Billboard 200. I feel like Dark Matter will debut somewhere between third and fifth on that chart. We'll find out in about a month! 

The formula for the chart changed in 2014. If the pre-2014 formula had been in place in 2020, Gigaton would have debuted at No. 2 instead of No. 5. Dark Matter will face the same chart-formula headwinds as Gigaton.

By the way, in addition to the new Taylor Swift album, there is also a new Springsteen greatest-hits album being released on April 19. With there already being multiple "best of" Springsteen sets on the market, I'm not totally sure what to expect from this new one, but Bruce is not someone to be underestimated when it comes to placement on the album chart (though he faces the same headwinds as Pearl Jam under the current formula).

CarryTheZero said:

BF25394 said:

CarryTheZero said:

Maybe Running isn’t being sent as a radio single, but it’s just a song released for consumption?

On another note, both Running and Dark Matter on in the top 8 of the top songs on the PJ artist page in Apple Music. Those songs haven’t changed in a long time.

Yes, that's what I'm assuming. They released it as a teaser for the album, but it's not really a "single" in the conventional sense. (Technically, singles in the conventional sense generally don't exist anymore, but an emphasis track for radio is serving the same purpose that singles served.)

Are the other six songs the ones I'd expect (i.e., the six songs that still get played regularly on the radio): "Alive"; "Even Flow"; "Jeremy"; "Black"; "Daughter"; and "Better Man"?

Well, almost, it was Elderly and YL instead of daughter and betterman. Although it’s shifted again and they’ve dropped down to #10 or so. Still nice to see them so high up in the count for new tracks!

I actually asked a friend about this after that post and, when he looked, I thought he said that "Just Breathe" was one of the two songs (with "Yellow Ledbetter").

EDIT: I now realize that it's not necessary to have Apple Music to be able to see this, so I can see that the current top ten are: 1) "Even Flow"; 2) "Black"; 3) "Alive"; 4) "Just Breathe"; 5) "Jeremy"; 6) "Yellow Ledbetter"; 7) "Better Man"; 8) "Daughter"; 9) "Running"; 10) "Dark Matter."

It's interesting that "Just Breathe" and "Yellow Ledbetter" are clearly very popular but get practically no airplay on the stations that play the other six songs. It makes sense why "Ledbetter" isn't played since it wasn't a single and because of the way it's sung. And "Just Breathe" doesn't fit the oldies format that a lot of these "modern rock" stations now have (although it is, incredibly, 15 years old now). Maybe in another fifteen years when people who are 25-39 now become nostalgic for the 2010s.