AC/DC Debuts at No. 1

AC/DC’s first album in six years 'Power Up' debuts at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, giving the legendary rock band its third chart-topping set.

The new studio effort was released via Columbia Records on Nov. 13 and starts with 117,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in the week ending Nov. 19, according to Nielsen Music/MRC Data. 

AC/DC previously hit No. 1 with 2008’s Black Ice and 1981’s For Those About to Rock (We Salute You). All told, Power Up is AC/DC’s 26th charting album, and 10th top 10.

Also in the top 10, Future and Lil Uzi Vert’s first collaborative album, Pluto x Baby Pluto, debuts at No. 2, Chris Stapleton’s Starting Over enters at No. 3, Queen's Greatest Hits reaches the top 10 for the first time and the prolific YoungBoy Never Broke Again clocks his fourth top 10 of 2020 with the arrival of Until I Return at No. 10.

The Billboard 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. The new Nov. 28-dated chart (where Power Up debuts at No. 1) will be posted in full on Billboard's website on Nov. 24. For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both Twitter and Instagram.

Of Power Up’s 117,000 units earned in the tracking week ending Nov. 19, album sales comprise 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 charges in with the largest sales week of 2020 for a rock album. The last rock set to log a larger sales frame was Tool’s Fear Inoculum (248,000; chart dated Sept. 14, 2019).

Power Up’s sales were assisted by some retailer exclusive editions, vinyl variants and an elaborate limited edition deluxe CD package that retails for $49.

The limited edition deluxe CD package is a pricey affair because the CD is housed in a box that features a red light-up AC/DC logo on its cover and has a built-in speaker that plays the opening bars of the album’s lead single, “Shot in the Dark.”