Billie Eilish’s new studio album Hit Me Hard and Soft has debuted at No. 2 on the latest Billboard 200 albums chart, marking the singer-songwriter’s best-selling week ever.
The new Eilish album has 339,000 equivalent album units earned on the chart dated June 1 (for the week ending May 23). That figure represents Eilish’s largest week ever by units earned, and of that sum, 191,000 are traditional album sales, again her best sales week yet.
Billboard also reports that the 191,000 traditional sales figure includes 90,000 in vinyl sales, yet another Eilish best.
The figures handily surpass Eilish’s previous top sales: Her 2019 debut When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? which registered 313,000 units. Her previous biggest sales week, Billboard notes, was the opening frame of the debut album, with 170,000.
Hit Me Hard and Soft is Eilish’s third album to reach the top two on the chart, following Happier Than Ever (in 2021) and When We All Fall Asleep.
As expected, the No. 1 position on the June 1 chart is Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department, holding onto the top spot for a fifth consecutive week. The album earned 378,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. for the week.
Eilish announced the new album on April 8, and staged two listening events on May 15 and May 16 at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York and the Kia Forum in Inglewood, California, respectively. AMC Theatres screened a listening event on May 16-17 across more than 100 theaters in the U.S., and an official music video for the album’s single “Lunch” was released on May 17, the same day the album dropped.
Eilish will launch a world tour on September 29 in Quebec to support the new album, with dates scheduled through July 2025. Three October dates at New York’s Madison Square Garden are already sold out, as are three December dates at the Kia Forum.
