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U2, Chris Stapleton Dethrone Taylor Swift on Elite 100
Taylor Swift has been knocked from the No. 1 spot on Pollstar’s Elite 100 Artists chart, with new music from U2 and Chris Stapleton dropping her down to No. 3 for the week.
Rick Diamond / Getty Images for Kicker Country Stampede – Chris Stapleton
Chris Stapleton performs at Kicker Country Stampede at Tuttle Creek State Park in Manhattan, Kan., June 23.
U2’s new Songs of Experience album helped the band move more than 175,000 units in the week ending Dec. 7, according to BuzzAngle Music.
Bono and the boys, who recently announced 24 arena dates for May and June, are in the running for tour of the year after the Joshua Tree 2017 stadium tour grossed $316 million.
The routing was almost entirely comprised of stadiums, with 21 shows in North America to lead things off. Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif.; Soldier Field in Chicago; and MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. were all selected for double-doses of U2.
In the midst of this leg, the group played Bonnaroo in Manchester, Tenn., on June 9. The first north American leg grossed a reported $123 million and reported more than 1 million tickets.
After that was a run of 12 shows in Europe, starting with two nights in England’s Twickenham Stadium July 8-9. Rome’s Olympic Stadium; Stade de France in Paris; Amsterdam Arena in Amsterdam were all selected for two-night stands, meaning eight of the group’s 12 European plays were part of doubleheaders.
The last night in Europe was Aug. 1 in Brussels’ King Baudouin Stadium, again to a reported 100 percent-capacity crowd. This leg grossed a reported $83 million and moved a reported 744,454 tickets.
September saw the band return to North America for eight more shows with a combined gross of $380,585,915 million and 350,292 tickets reported.
This week’s Elite 100 Artists Chart
Pollstar, with the BuzzAngle Music-powered Elite 100 Artists Chart, gives a snapshot of the week’s top-selling artists based on music sales and streaming, counting data from the U.S. and Canada. All product, not just current releases, by that artist are included in the figures and the total for ranking purposes is based on an album sale equaling 1, 10 song sales equal 1 album, and 1,500 on-demand streams equal 1 album.
Chris Stapleton, No. 2 on the list with a total score of 147.3 for the week, released From A Room: Volume 2, moving 127,800 album copies for the week. He released Volume 1 in May, and also hit at No. 2 on the Elite 100 chart for that week.
Pollstar estimates that Chris Stapleton, CMA male vocalist of the year, may have sold more than 850,000 tickets so far in 2017, with highlights including Oct. 13-14 at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, which sold 31,862 tickets and grossed $1.7 million. Another double was two shows at Bank of NH Pavilion in Gilford, N.H., which sold 14,847 tickets and grossed $707,146.
He moved 18,547 tickets at Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre in Missouri, grossing $565,922.
Swift is not far behind at No. 3 with a score of 117, and still sold an impressive 61,500 copies of her new reputation album which has its first full-week of availability on streaming services after nearly three weeks of windowing her album (i.e. keeping it off of music subscription services).
Recently she’s been hitting a number of radio Christmas concerts including the Dec. 10 Capital FM Jingle Bell Ball at The O2 in London (Ed Sheeran, The Script, Chainsmokers), iHeartradio Jingle Ball Tour at Madison Square Garden Dec. 8 (Sam Smith, Fall Out Boy, Demi Lovato, Sheeran) and B96 Jingle Bash at Allstate Arena in Rosemont, Ill., Dec. 7, which had Backstreet Boys, Logic, Fifth Harmony and others.
Swift is to play stadiums far and wide starting in May, and already has plans taking her into November in Australia and New Zealand, and just added six more North American dates.