20th Century Fox
Just as The Greatest Showman scored a Best Song Golden Globe for “This Is Me,” its companion album has hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and iTunes charts. It’s the first soundtrack to top the Billboard tally since Fifty Shades Darker spent one week at the summit in March.
The record debuted at No. 71 on the 200 four weeks and has climbed each week since. It’s the first album to reach the top without debuting at No. 1 in a year. Greatest Showman also is the first soundtrack from a theatrical musical to top the chart since Pitch Perfect 2 in May 30; Disney’s album from The Descendants reached the peak since then.
Featuring songs penned by the Oscar- and Tony-winning team of Benj Pasek & Justin Paul (La La Land, Dear Evan Hansen) The Greatest Showman soundtrack shifted 106,000 units for the week ending January 4, of which 78,000 were traditional album sales.
Billboard notes that the film’s stars Hugh Jackman and Zac Efron now have four No. 1 soundtracks between them, with the latter singing on 2006’s High School Musical and its 2007 sequel and Jackman appearing on Les Miserables in 2013.
Whereas soundtrack albums — and individual tracks from films and TV shows — once were regular visitors to the Billboard summit, only 10 companion discs have hit No. 1 in the past five years. The recent benchmark is Disney’s Frozen, which topped the Billboard 200 for 13 nonconsecutive weeks in 2014 and stayed in the top 10 for 39 weeks in a row. The disc is certified quadruple-platinum.
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