The Beatles’ Let It Be surges back onto the Billboard 200 albums chart (dated Oct. 30), re-entering at No. 5 following its deluxe special edition reissue on Oct. 15. The set was first released in 1970 as the final studio effort from the band, and also doubled as the soundtrack to the documentary film of the same name. The album spent four weeks atop the Billboard 200 (June 13 – July 4, 1970-dated charts) and is one of a record 19 No. 1 albums for the group.
For its special edition, the album was reintroduced in a variety of expanded formats and editions, including many with previously unreleased tracks. All versions of the album, old and new, are combined for tracking and charting purposes.
The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption as measured in equivalent album units. Units comprise album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Each unit equals one album sale, or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an album.
The new Oct. 30, 2021-dated chart (where Let It Be re-enters at No. 5) will be posted in full on Billboard’s website on Oct. 26.
Let It Be earned 55,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in the week ending Oct. 21 (up 3,899%), according to MRC Data. Of that sum, album sales comprise 48,000 (up 11,570%; making it the top-selling album of the week), SEA units comprise 6,000 (up 589%; equaling 8.34 million on-demand streams of the set’s tracks) and TEA units comprise 1,000 (up 1,180%).
Let It Be was last on the Billboard 200 dated Dec. 4, 2010, when it ranked at No. 120. It was in the top 10 on the Aug. 8, 1970 chart, when it placed at No. 4.
The Let It Be reissue also makes waves on other Billboard album charts. It re-enters at No. 1 on Top Album Sales, Catalog Albums, Soundtracks and Tastemaker Albums – marking its first week atop all four charts.*
The Let It Be reissue precedes the arrival of director Peter Jackson’s upcoming documentary series The Beatles: Get Back. The three episodes will premiere, respectively, on Nov. 25, 26 and 27 exclusively on Disney+.
The rerelease of Let It Be is part of the ongoing series of expanded reissues of select studio albums by The Beatles. It follows reissues of Abbey Road in 2019 (first released in 1969), The Beatles in 2018 (often referred to as the White Album, first released in 1968) and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 2017 (first released in 1967). All four albums originally hit No. 1 shortly after their release, and then returned to the top 10 after their recent expanded reissues.
*Top Album Sales and Catalog Albums both launched in 1991, Soundtracks began in 2001 and Tastemaker Albums started in 2005. Top Album Sales ranks the top-selling albums of the week by traditional album sales, Catalog Albums ranks the week’s most popular older albums [generally those more than 18 months old] by equivalent album units, Soundtracks ranks the week’s most popular soundtracks by equivalent album units and Tastemaker Albums ranks the week’s top-selling albums at independent and small chain record stores.
José Carlos Almeida
