When it comes to hard rock, no band is more loved than AC/DC. The Australian quintet tap into the fun-loving side of every headbanger’s psyche and help them celebrate the universal truths of getting drunk, getting laid, and getting in trouble. Now, it looks like those principles are alive and well in 2020, as AC/DC’s new album Power Up has entered the Billboard 200…at #1.
According to Billboard, AC/DC’s Power Up topped the charts with 117,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in the week ending Nov. 19, according to Nielsen Music/MRC Data. That makes the album the band’s third #1, the other two being 1981’s For Those About To Rock and 2008’s Black Ice. But it’s also AC/DC’s 26th charting album, and their 10th time in the Top 10.
To elaborate on the ‘equivalent album units earned’ label, Billboard’s Top 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption as measured in equivalent album units. Units comprise album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Each unit equals one album sale, or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an album.
For Power Up, that means 111,000, SEA units comprise 5,000 (equaling 7.8 million on-demand streams of the album’s songs) and 1,000 comprise TEA units. Power Up sold 71,000 on CD across all of its editions, 23,000 as a digital download album and 16,000 on vinyl LP. It’s also the first rock album to reach Billboard’s #1 spot since Tool’s 2019 album Fear Inoculum — which was also the last rock album to log a larger sales week than Power Up.
In conclusion: congrats to AC/DC! The world might be burning, terrible dance pop and gold-nugget country might be dominating the airwaves, but we can take comfort in knowing that when AC/DC drop a new album, the world listens like crazy.
AC/DC’s Power Up is out now on Columbia Records.
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Words by Chris Krovatin
