RS Charts: Morgan Wallen Breaks Another Record to Top Artists 500 Chart

Morgan Wallen became the second country star to reach Number One on the Rolling Stone Artists 500 chart, pulling in a staggering 245.8 million song streams for the week of January 8th through 14th. This marks the highest weekly streams total for a country artist in Alpha Data history, and the 25th highest weekly streams total overall.

The achievement comes several months after country’s other major streaming act, Luke Combs, became the first artist in the genre to reach the top of the RS 500 following the November release of the deluxe edition of his hit album, What You See Is What You Get.

It was a big, record-breaking week for Wallen, as his second album, Dangerous: The Double Album, broke the record for the biggest debut for a country album in history of the Top 200 Albums chart, debuting at Number One with 263,900 album-equivalent units. To cap it all off, Wallen placed six songs from Dangerous in the Top 10 of the Top 100 Songs chart, with “Wasted On You” bowing highest at Number Two.


The Rolling Stone Artists 500 chart ranks the most-streamed artists of the week in the United States, taking into account audio streams across an artist’s entire catalog during the tracking period. The chart does not include passive listening such as terrestrial radio or digital radio. The Artists 500 is updated daily, and each week Rolling Stone finalizes and publishes an official version of the chart, covering the seven-day period ending the previous Thursday.

Top Artists

The week of January 8, 2021
1

Morgan Wallen

Song Streams
245.8M

2

Taylor Swift

Song Streams
120.9M

3

Drake

Song Streams
97.5M

4

Juice Wrld

Song Streams
87.4M

5

YoungBoy Never Broke Again

Song Streams
84.1M

Elsewhere, Olivia Rodrigo made her first appearance on the Artists 500 chart this week, debuting at Number Seven with 72.9 million song streams. Her numbers were driven primarily by the historic arrival of her single, “Drivers License,” which premiered at Number One on the RS100 as the biggest-ever debut in chart history. The song pulled in 568,700 song units — the highest unit total in the chart’s history — fueled by 67.7 million streams.

Beyond Wallen and Rodrigo, things were relatively normal in the upper echelons of the Artists 500 chart. Taylor Swift dropped to Number Two with 120.9 million streams, while Drake, Juice WRLD and Youngboy Never Broke Again rounded out the Top Five with 97.5 million, 87.4 million and 84.1 million streams, respectively. Outside the Top 10, however, R&B singer Jazmine Sullivan made her Artists 500 debut at Number 25, racking up 42 million streams as her new album, Heaux Tales, debuted at Number Four on the RS200.