UPDATED 11/4/20 6:30 p.m. ET: The projections for Ariana Grande's new album Positions have taken a dip, with Hits Daily Double's latest estimation putting it somewhere between 190,000 and 200,000. Positions is still expected to debut at No. 1.
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Ariana Grande is set to land her fifth No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart with her latest release, Positions.
Hits Daily Double reports that early tracking numbers for Positions indicate the album is likely to reach the top spot with between 240-260k album-equivalent units, with 60-70k of those coming from actual sales. By comparison, her last full-length record, Thank U, Next, debuted at No. 1 with 360,000 album-equivalent units last year. The first-week projections for the record arrive after the title track debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart, Billboard reports.
With over 35 million U.S. streams and 34,000 units sold in the week ending Oct. 29, "Positions" marks Grande's fifth No. 1 debut on the chart, and her third this year. Following the chart performance of "Rain on Me" and "Stuck With U," this makes her the first artist in the history of the chart with three No. 1 debuts in a single year.
Meanwhile, Trippie Redd's new album Pegasus is also on track to make a strong debut, with a projected 60-70k album-equivalent units. That's an improvement over the rapper's last studio album, !, which debuted at No. 3 with 51,000 album-equivalent units. Sam Smith's latest record, Love Goes, is projected to come in not far behind with 40-50k album-equivalent units.
