Adele’s “Easy on Me” achieves the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart, following its first full week of tracking. A week earlier, it had debuted on the No. 68 spot from its first five hours of availability.
The ballad becomes Adele’s fifth Hot 100 No. 1 and first since “Hello” ruled for 10 weeks in 2015-16. It has the second-biggest streaming week since the Global 200 began, after BTS’ “Butter” launched with 289.2 million streams on the June 5 chart. “Easy” scores the third-biggest sales frame, following “Butter” (248,600, June 5) and BTS’ “Permission to Dance” (138,600, July 24).
It drew 65 million radio airplay audience impressions and 53.9 million U.S. streams and sold 74,000 downloads in the week ending Oct. 21, according to MRC Data.
While “Easy on Me” is a piano ballad, it’s not a vocal-and-piano-only song like “Someone Like You,” which became the first Hot 100 No. 1 with exclusively vocals and piano. The new leader features Adele’s vocals, as well as bass, kick drum, and piano by Greg Kurstin and strings arranged and conducted by David Campbell; Adele and Kurstin co-wrote it and Kurstin solely produced it.
The London-born, Adele, becomes one of six British-born soloists with at least five Hot 100 No. 1s. Easy on Me” is also Adele’s seventh Hot 100 top 10. In addition to her five No. 1s, “Skyfall” and “Send My Love (To Your New Lover)” each reached No. 8, in October 2012 and September 2016.
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