Hamilton is back in the discourse, for better or worse, and it’s also back on the Billboard charts, which I guess means everyone will have “Non-Stop” stuck in their heads again for the next six months. It will never not be 2016!
Billboard says the hip-hop musical’s original cast recording album hit No. 2 on the Billboard 200 chart this week, with folks hitting it up hard now that the full musical (minus a few “fucks”) is streaming on Disney+. Hamilton’s been in the top 5 before—after it cleaned up at the Tony Awards in 2016, it peaked at No. 3. Last week, it was at No. 14.
Hamilton is now the highest-charted musical album since Hair hit No. 1 in 1969,(though it only topped its own record, so I guess it’s been the highest-charted musical album for a while). Anyway, if you are currently listening to Hamilton for the first time, I highly recommend listening to the Hamilton Mixtape, which is better than the studio album and has an incredible Ashanti cover of “Helpless.”