ILLENIUM ignites atop Billboard’s Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart (dated July 31) with Fallen Embers. The set earned 14,000 equivalent album units in its first week, according to MRC Data.
The release is ILLENIUM’s second No. 1, after Ascend spent eight frames on top in 2019. It’s also only the second set to debut at the summit this year, following Porter Robinson’s Nurture in May.
ILLENIUM additionally impacts the multimetric Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart with eight new entries from Fallen Embers, including “Blame Myself,” with Tori Kelly, at No. 9. Adding five tracks that debuted earlier, 13 of the album’s 14 songs have hit the chart, and four have reached the top 10: “Nightlight” (No. 8, October); “Paper Thin,” with Tom DeLonge and Angels & Airwaves (No. 10, November); “Sideways,” with Valerie Broussard and Nurko (No. 10, May); and now “Blame Myself.”
ILLENIUM’s seventh Hot Dance/Electronic Songs top 10 and Kelly’s first, “Blame Myself” bows with 2.3 million U.S. streams, also good for a No. 15 start on the Dance/Electronic Streaming Songs chart. With sales of 1,000 downloads, “Blame” bounds in at No. 6 on Dance/Electronic Digital Song Sales.
Further on the Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart, Swedish House Mafia debuts both of its newly released songs: “It Gets Better” (No. 13, 1.3 million streams) and “Lifetime,” featuring Ty Dolla $ign and 070 Shake (No. 31, 526,000 streams).
The tracks are the act’s third and fourth total entries on the list (which began in January 2013). Two of the group’s heritage hits appeared on the inaugural chart: “Don’t You Worry Child,” featuring John Martin (No. 2), and “Greyhound” (No. 11).
Elsewhere on the Dance/Electronic Digital Song Sales list, Gloria Gaynor earns her first leader with the classic “I Will Survive,” a beneficiary of 69-cent sale-pricing in Apple’s iTunes Store. The anthem, a three-week No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1979, rides an 870% surge to 3,000 sold for its re-entry atop Dance/Electronic Digital Song Sales (besting its prior No. 4 peak). Only two songs in the history of the chart, which began in 2010, took longer than Gaynor’s 80 weeks at reach No. 1: Gorillaz’s “Feel Good Inc” (138 weeks) and Coldplay’s “A Sky Full of Stars” (130).
Looking at the Dance/Mix Show Airplay chart, Lodato lifts to his third leader with “Neon Lights.” The DJ/producer previously led with “Home” (November 2019) and “Good Thing,” with Bright Sparks (this March). “Neon” is scoring core-dance airplay across outlets including KMVQ-HD2 San Francisco, Music Choice’s Dance/EDM channel and KNHC (C89.5) Seattle. (The Dance/Mix Show Airplay chart measures radio airplay on a select group of full-time dance stations, along with plays during mix shows on nearly 80 top 40-formatted reporters.)
“‘Neon Lights’ was the first song I was able to create an entire theme around,” Lodato tells Billboard. “From the music video taking place in futuristic Las Vegas, where I’m fighting robots and falling in love with a hot Cyborg, to the virtual reality environment that Tribe XR created with me, which you can see a glimpse of in the background of my cover art, it’s been a blast. You can actually hang out in the sci-fi Lodato Lounge via an Oculus virtual reality headset, and DJ on the fully interactive virtual Pioneer 3000s.”
Staying on Dance/Mix Show Airplay, Sigrid jumps to her first top 10 with “Mirror” (11-6). It’s her second chart appearance, after “Don’t Feel Like Crying” (No. 23, 2019).