ROB SCHMITZ, HOST:
And finally, today, the british band Coldplay topped the Billboard 200 this week with its latest album.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WE PRAY")
COLDPLAY: (Singing) And so we pray, for someone to come and show me the way. And so we pray, for some shelter and some records to play. And so we pray. We'll be singing "Baraye."
SCHMITZ: That's the song "We Pray," featured on Coldplay's album "Moon Music." None of the singles have blown up in a big way. And as Stephen Thompson of NPR Music reports, that makes the album's success come as a bit of a surprise.
STEPHEN THOMPSON, BYLINE: This year has brought plenty of new and newish artists, fresh stars like Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan and Shaboozey. So it feels almost quaint to see the Billboard 200 topped this week by the earnestly anthemic British uplift of Coldplay.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ALL MY LOVE")
COLDPLAY: (Singing) You got all my love. Whether it rains or pours, I'm all yours.
THOMPSON: "Moon Music," Coldplay's 10th studio album, is its fifth to hit No. 1 but its first in a decade. That chart performance was fueled almost entirely by an old-fashioned metric, album sales, which accounted for nearly 90% of the band's 120,000 equivalent album units. That's Billboard speak for the cocktail of sales, airplay and streaming that goes into ranking the performance of albums on any given week's Billboard 200 chart.
Some of that success was aided by high-profile TV appearances on "SNL" and elsewhere, but newfangled tricks helped too. The album was available in no fewer than eight different vinyl editions, including two signed versions and a Target exclusive edition with three extra tracks. Plus there were six different CD editions and four different discounted download editions, including two that include scads of bonus tracks.
Pick your metaphor - they pulled out all the stops; they left it all on the field; they made fetch happen. Still, with no blockbuster hits and not a ton of streaming or radio airplay, it seems doubtful that "Moon Music" will hold on to the top spot for long. Stephen Thompson, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FEELSLIKEIMFALLINGINLOVE")
COLDPLAY: (Singing) It feels like I'm falling in love... Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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