Morgan Wallen’s ‘Dangerous’ Hits No.1 And Breaks Country Streaming Record

Morgan Wallen’s Dangerous: The Double Album has delivered on the promise of its much-vaunted release on January 8 by debuting at No.1 on the Billboard 200. It does so in style, with the biggest-ever streaming total for a country album.

The 30-song set opens with 265,000 combined units, according to MRC Data, in the chart for the sales week ending January 14 (to be dated Jan. 23 and published in full by Billboard on Wednesday). The total includes 184,000 album equivalent (SEA) units. Album sales are 74,000, of which 50,000 are downloads and 24,000 physical.

As Billboard reports, the streaming total is more than double the previous record for a country release, set by the 102 million streams for Luke Combs’ What You See Is What You Get last October, when the 2019 album was reissued in an expanded format.

Dangerous logs the 22nd-largest streaming week for an album in the US, and the third-largest ever for a non-R&B or hip-hop album. It’s behind only Ariana Grande’s Thank U, Next, which had 307 million in its first week, and Taylor Swift’s folklore, which logged 289 million.

Dangerous: The Double Album follows Wallen’s debut set If I Know Me, a long-running success which was released in April 2018 but went on to a No.13 peak on the all-genre chart in August 2020. The set reached No.1 on Top Country Albums and contained three country airplay No.1s: “Up Down” (featuring Florida Georgia Line), “Whiskey Glasses,” and “Chasin’ You.”

In his Billboard cover story this month, Wallen says of his place at the forefront of country’s digital era: “I feel like we really have a position to usher country music into a streaming era. All these people are probably like, ‘Who the hell is Morgan Wallen?’ But it’s cool to get to be at the forefront of country music to say, ‘Hey, our fans are here too, now — just so you know.’”

Dangerous: The Double Album can be bought here.