Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper’s A Star Is Born soundtrack is aiming for No. 1 on next week’s Billboard 200 albums chart

‘A Star Is Born' Soundtrack Heading for No. 1 Debut on Billboard 200 Albums Chart
10/9/2018 by Keith Caulfield

Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper’s A Star Is Born soundtrack is aiming for No. 1 on next week’s Billboard 200 albums chart. The set, which was released on Oct. 5 via Interscope Records, could launch with perhaps 200,000 equivalent album units earned in the week ending Oct. 11, according to industry forecasters.

If A Star Is Born opens atop the tally, it would mark the third soundtrack to top the list in 2018, following Black Panther: The Album and The Greatest Showman. Further, it would garner Lady Gaga her fifth No. 1 and Cooper his first.

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 top 10 of the Oct. 20-dated Billboard 200 chart (where A Star Is Born may debut at No. 1) is scheduled to be revealed on Billboard’s websites on Sunday, Oct. 14.

Lady Gaga, the star of A Star Is Born, previously led the Billboard 200 with Joanne (in 2016), Cheek to Cheek with Tony Bennett (2014), ARTPOP (2013) and Born This Way (2011).

On course for a No. 2 entry on next week’s Billboard 200 is Twenty One Pilots’ Trench, which may launch with around 170,000 units. The new studio effort is the act’s follow-up to the blockbuster Blurryface, which bowed at No. 1 on the June 6, 2015-dated list and has yet to depart the chart (after 177 consecutive weeks). The album has earned 3.74 million equivalent album units, of which 1.7 million are in traditional album sales.

Trench was led by the single “Jumpsuit,” which spent three weeks at No. 1 on the Alternative Songs airplay chart. A second track promoted to radio stations, “My Blood,” climbed 8-7 on the most recently published Alternative Songs tally (dated Oct. 13).

Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter V will likely slip from No. 1 to No. 3 in its second week on the chart, with maybe around 150,000 units. The album blasted in at No. 1 with 480,000 units earned, according to Nielsen Music.

Lil Baby and Gunna’s Drip Harder and Eric Church’s Desperate Man could both bow in the top five with around 120,000 and 110,000 units earned, respectively.

Steve Perry could log his first top 10 album, as his new Traces may start at No. 6 with around 65,000 units. It’s Perry’s third solo studio album, and his first since 1994’s For the Love of Strange Medicine, which debuted and peaked at No. 15. The former Journey front man released one earlier studio set, Street Talk, which peaked at No. 12 in 1984.