Getting into Metallica’s 1991 self-titled LP, aka the Black Album, is a rite of passage for any young heavy metal fan. It’s been so popular for so long, in fact, that it has now joined an elite club of albums with impossibly lengthy runs on the Billboard 200. As Blabbermouth points out, the Black Album has now become the fourth release to spend 750 nonconsecutive weeks on the chart. It joins Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon (990 weeks) and two best-of compilations, Bob Marley’s Legend (843 weeks) and Journey’s Greatest Hits (813 weeks).

Metallica was the band’s first #1 album in America, spending four weeks at the top of the chart. In 2020, when it reentered the chart at #200, it was already the fourth longest charting album in history at 580 weeks. The following year, it surged back into the top 10 thanks to a 30th anniversary reissue. This week, it’s in at #178.

At the time of the Black Album’s release in August 1991, the Billboard 200 had recently instituted the SoundScan tracking system, which allowed for a more accurate tally of sales figures. Previously it was rare to see albums debut at #1, but Metallica took advantage of the new system to enter on top with 600,000 in sales in its first week. The chart’s tabulation methods have since been updated to account for individual track sales and on-demand track streams. Through all those changes, the people of America have continued to exit light, enter night, et al.

Up at the top of this week’s chart, Taylor Swift held off her latest challenger, Zach Bryan’s The Great American Bar Scene, to stay at #1 for a 12th straight week with The Tortured Poets Department, surpassing Fearless and 1989 to become her album with most weeks at #1. Per Billboard, it also surpasses Whitney Houston’s Whitney to become the only album by a woman to spend its first 12 weeks at #1. The last album to spend 12 weeks at #1 was also by Houston, The Bodyguard soundtrack, which put up 13 straight weeks at #1 from December 1992 to March 1993, a mark Tortured Poets could tie next week. Only two other albums have spent their first 12 weeks at #1: Morgan Wallen’s 2023 behemoth One Thing At A Time (12 weeks) and Stevie Wonder’s 1976 classic Songs In The Key Of Life (13 weeks). Swift could surpass Wallen and tie Wonder next week as well. Whitney and Songs In The Key Of Life were two of only six albums to debut at #1 before the introduction of SoundScan, a service now known as Luminate and owned by Billboard.

Tortured Poets put up 163,000 equivalent album units, including 90,000 in sales, 72,000 in streaming equivalent albums (based on 94.83 million on-demand track streams), and 1,000 in individual track sales. The Great American Bar Scene, which debuted at #17 last week with 32,000 units after being released on the last day of the tracking week to coincide with Independence Day, shot to #2 in its first full week of tracking with 137,000 units.

Over on the Hot 100 singles chart, Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” is back at #1 for a second nonconsecutive week after the release of its music video on the night of July 4. According to Billboard, it’s his first solo track to spend multiple weeks at #1. “Humble” spent one week atop the chart in 2017. Kendrick’s other multi-week chart-toppers have been features on Taylor Swift’s “Bad Blood” remix (which we happened to cover in today’s Number Ones column) and this year’s Future/Metro Boomin track “Like That.”