Swedish hard rock band Ghost lands at number one on the Billboard charts

Hip-hop then became the defining music of the moment, and then everybody got into country and now seemingly everybody wants to have a country album. Except Taylor Swift, who left country behind to go full-on pop, which seems to have worked out. Also that K-pop stuff or whatever seems popular. However, rock may be back from the dead, and fitting it's a band called Ghost that is the argument for this assertion.

Now, Ghost are no new kids on the block. The Swedish hard rock band (metal-adjacent, but seemingly not fully metal) has been around since 2006, and they are very silly. Look, maybe you think the costumes and the theatrics are cool. When Beyonce does "Cowboy Carter," she's essentially does costume theatrics, and it was incredibly successful. However, we see the schtick of Ghost and it lands a little on the silly side for us. It's powering them to new heights, though.

"Skeleta," the band's sixth album, debuted at number one on the Billboard 200. That's right, a Swedish hard rock band had the biggest album in the United States. Ghost's album outsold and outperformed offerings from SZA, Bad Bunny, and Morgan Wallen, among others. They are the first hard rock band to have the top Billboard 200 album since 2020, and that was an AC/DC legacy album. 

The driving force, as it often is now, was vinyl. Using Billboard's tracking assessment, 89-percent of their chart-topping total came from "traditional album sales," and the band sold a reported 44,000 vinyls. That's the third-most for any rock album since Billboard started tracking such things in 1991.

Maybe this is a one-of-one circumstance. Ghost might just be a big fish in a small pond that has emerged as the clear choice as biggest hard rock band. They put out a new album, maybe with some slick vinyl packaging, and they sold a ton of copies. Still, to have the number one album on the Billboard charts is notable, and possibly significant. Rock might be primed to make a comeback as a popular genre. 

(h/t Consequence)