'Furious 7' Soundtrack Closing in on No.1 at the Billboard 200 Chart
The Furious 7 soundtrack's 15-position rise is the largest jump into the top two on the chart since the Les Miserables soundtrack zoomed 31 rungs from No. 33 to No. 2 on the January 12, 2013, Billboard chart, observes The Hollywood Reporter. At No. 1 this week on the Billboard 200 is rapper Wale with his The Album About Nothing, his second chart-topper following 2013's The Gifted. With both The Album About Nothing and the Furious 7 soundtrack at Nos. 1 and 2, Atlantic Records now owns the top two slots for the first time since the July 19, 2014, chart.
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 new Billboard 200's top 10 will be revealed on Wednesday, April 15.
Billboard says the Furious 7 soundtrack is aiming for the No. 1 slot on next week's chart, with industry forecasters predicting that the set could move more than 80,000 equivalent album units in the week ending April 12. The likely runner-up on the new chart will be All Time Low's Future Hearts, just released April 7, which could earn 70,000 units.
The Furious 7 soundtrack jumped from No. 17 to No. 2 on the chart, in the wake of the film's April 3 premiere in movie theaters, shifting 74,000 units, up by some 202 percent. Of that sum, 45 percent was comprised of pure album sales, while 51 percent were TEA. If Furious 7 hits No. 1 on the Billboard 200, it will mark the fourth No. 1 soundtrack in the past year, following Frozen, Guardians of the Galaxy: Awesome Mix Vol. 1 and the Empire TV soundtrack.
The prodigious jump in the chart by the Furious 7 soundtrack is in large part because of its hit single "See You Again," by Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth, which was turned into a touching tribute to the late Paul Walker via a new music video released Sunday showing a montage of the actor from all of the seven Fast and the Furious movies from the past fourteen years.