Beyoncé's 'Cowboy Carter' Expected To Make Billboard 200 Splash With Major First-Week Sales

Beyoncé‘s new album Cowboy Carter has dominated the music world since its release last week, and now it seems to be on track for the biggest sales week of the year.

HITS Daily Double reported on Monday (April 1) that Bey’s new LP is “projecting first-week activity north of” 350,000 album-equivalent units, giving it an easy number one on the Billboard 200 chart, and making it the likely winner for all of 2024.

It is also on track to beat out her last album, 2022’s Renaissance, by around 20,000 units.

Chart Data points out that almost 150,000 of the singer’s first-week total has come from activity on the album’s two pre-release singles, “16 Carriages” and “Texas Hold ‘Em.”

Cowboy Carter set a number of first-day streaming records upon its release on Friday (March 29). Spotify announced that day that it was their most-streamed album in a single day in all of 2024.

It was record-setting on Amazon Music as well, with the most first-day streams for a country album by a female artist in the service’s history.

Cowboy Carter has also been a critical success, too. In a glowing 4.8 out of 5 review, HipHopDX‘s Tai Saint-Louis praised the album as “a reclamation of both the deep roots from which Bey has crafted her artistry and the many branches that have sprouted from Black music in America.”

“From the American flag on the cover, to the sounds, to the careful placement of iconic Americana like Parton, Nelson and even a Beach Boys interpolation, this project truly is an American requiem as the opening track states,” the review reads.

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“It’s Beyoncé’s reminder that much has been sacrificed to allow her to claim her identity as a southern girl and fully partake in all of America’s unique artistic and cultural traditions.”

Cowboy Carter‘s impending debut atop the Billboard 200 means it will dethrone Future and Metro Boomin‘s joint album We Don’t Trust You, which topped the chart this week.

Powered by the Kendrick Lamar-assisted “Like That,” which finds the Compton native taking aim at Drake and J. Cole, the project opened with 251,000 units.