After the failed experiment of releasing three albums in the span of four months, you would have thought Green Day’s ability to nab a number one album was long gone. Those three efforts – ¡Uno!, ¡Dos!, and ¡Tre! – that were released in 2012 only managed to peak at number two with ¡Uno!, while ¡Dos! and ¡Tre! fell significantly lower. However, all of that is seemingly irrelevant now with their new record, Revolution Radio, which officially gives the band their third number one debut.
Revolution Radio is far and away Green Day’s best effort in the past decade, so the number one charting position is well warranted. In terms of sales, the record moved 95,000 equivalent album units while 90,000 of them were made up of traditional album sales. Though it debuts higher than ¡Uno!, Revolution Radio actually sells less in its first week than ¡Uno! did by a large margin (95k versus 139k). Number two on the chart this week goes to Norah Jones, while OneRepublic lands their highest charting record with Oh My My at number three.
Green Day’s Revolution Radio is musical redemption at its finest after rising from the lowest point in their careers. It’s the kind of success that shoots a jolt of longevity in a band that has already been around for two decades – and if the result is going to be albums like this, that longevity is welcome for as long as we can get it.
