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Noah Kahan’s The Great Divide Spends a Second Week at No. 1 on the Billboard 200
Noah Kahan’s The Great Divide leads the Billboard 200 for a second week as Kacey Musgraves and Michael Jackson move into the top 10.
Noah Kahan’s The Great Divide spends a second week at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, dated May 16, after arriving atop the chart a week earlier. The album earned 163,000 equivalent album units in the United States in the week ending May 7, according to Luminate. That total was down 58% from its opening week of 389,000.
The set is the first rock album to hold the top spot for at least two weeks in nearly three years. Zach Bryan’s self-titled album was the last rock release to do it, in September 2023. Billboard defines rock albums as those eligible for, or previously charting on, the Top Rock Albums chart.
Elsewhere in the top 10, Kacey Musgraves lands her sixth top 10 album, and all six have debuted inside the top five. Her Middle of Nowhere enters at No. 3 with 100,000 equivalent album units, her best week by units so far. Of that total, 64,500 came from album sales, giving it a No. 1 debut on Top Album Sales. SEA units made up 35,000, while TEA accounted for the rest.
The album, Musgraves’ sixth studio set, was announced in early March and released on May 1. It features Gregory Alan Isakov, Miranda Lambert, Willie Nelson and Billy Strings. The project was led by “Dry Spell,” which peaked at No. 15 on Hot Country Songs in March. Musgraves’ Middle of Nowhere arena tour starts Aug. 21 in Chicago and runs through the end of October.
The first-week sales were helped by 16 physical variants, including signed editions, plus a deluxe download version with two bonus tracks.
Chart note: this is only the second top 10 album to carry the exact title Middle of Nowhere. Hanson’s album of the same name reached No. 2 in 1997.
Michael Jackson continues to benefit from the renewed attention around the Michael biopic, with two albums in the top 10. Thriller rises from No. 7 to No. 5 with 62,000 equivalent album units, up 36%. Number Ones, released in 2003, climbs from No. 13 to No. 6 with 62,000 units, up 65%, and reaches the top 10 for the first time. It becomes Jackson’s 11th top 10 album.
With Number Ones moving into the tier, Jackson has now logged at least one new top 10 album in every decade from the 1970s onward as a solo artist. He is the fifth act overall to do so, joining Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen and James Taylor.
Jackson’s run breaks down this way: two top 10s in the 1970s, starting with Ben at No. 5 in 1972 and then Off the Wall, which reached the top 10 in September 1979 and peaked at No. 3 in February 1980; two in the 1980s with Thriller and Bad; two in the 1990s with Dangerous and HIStory: Past, Present and Future Book 1; two in the 2000s with Invincible and the posthumous Michael Jackson’s This Is It; two in the 2010s with Michael and Xscape; and now one in the 2020s with Number Ones.
Also in the latest top 10, Ella Langley’s former leader Dandelion holds at No. 2 with 103,000 equivalent album units. Morgan Wallen’s former No. 1 I’m the Problem slips from No. 3 to No. 4 with 83,000 units. BTS’ chart-topper ARIRANG falls to No. 7, Olivia Dean’s The Art of Loving stays at No. 8, Wallen’s One Thing at a Time remains at No. 9, and Bad Bunny’s former No. 1 DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS rounds out the top 10 at No. 10.
The Billboard 200 ranks the week’s most popular albums in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption, including album sales, track equivalent albums and streaming equivalent albums, as measured by Luminate. The new May 16, 2026-dated chart will be posted in full on Billboard’s website on May 12.
