My Chemical Romance's 'The Black Parade' Could Reach No. 1 on the Billboard 200
My Chemical Romance's 2006 album The Black Parade is expected to surge on next week's Billboard charts and contend for the No. 1 spot on the Billboard 200, the main US album chart, Billboard reports. The push follows the album's 20th anniversary reissue, which came out on Friday, 23 October. A No. 1 would be the first for the album and the first for the band.
The album sits at No. 139 on the Billboard 200 chart dated 31 October. That is its 161st week overall on the chart.
The reissue is a deluxe edition. It keeps all 14 tracks from the original album and adds six bonus cuts: three B-sides recorded during the same period and three live tracks. The physical release includes 15 new vinyl variants, which are different colours or designs of the same record, along with several new CD and cassette versions.
The album first arrived in 2006, debuting and peaking at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 with 240,000 copies sold in its first week. It was kept from the top by the Hannah Montana soundtrack, which sold 281,000 copies that same week. Its single "Welcome to the Black Parade" reached the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100, the main singles chart. The band's next album, Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys, released in 2010, peaked at No. 8 on the Billboard 200.
Attention on the band grew this week. On 28 October, Olivia Rodrigo posted a live clip from My Chemical Romance's set at Citi Field in Queens, New York, to her Instagram Stories.
The album's sales have been steady for some time. The Recording Industry Association of America, the body that certifies US music sales, has awarded it four-times platinum, which means the total of units it counts, including album copies and streams converted into album sales, has reached four million. In late September, Forbes reported that The Black Parade had spent three years on the Billboard 200 and that two other My Chemical Romance albums had returned to Billboard's Top Album Sales chart, which ranks albums by copies sold, alongside it.
Chart positions are counted in copies, and each copy is bought by someone. Next week's chart will show how many fans went looking for this reissue, in whichever format suited them, and whether that is enough for the top spot.
