Final week, Jason Aldean’s tune “Strive That in a Small City,” which the nation star portrays as a paean to neighborly values however critics have described as a name to racist vigilantism, opened at No. 2 on Billboard’s Sizzling 100 chart, after its music video turned a tradition conflict battleground.

Now the tune has ascended to the height, turning into the primary No. 1 single on Billboard’s all-genre singles chart in Aldean’s practically two-decade profession as a high Nashville hitmaker.

Simply two weeks in the past, earlier than the controversy started, the tune was posting minimal numbers. However in its most up-to-date week out, it garnered 31 million streams, offered 175,000 copies and reached a radio viewers of 9 million folks in the US, in accordance with the monitoring service Luminate.

Because the tune has stirred debate, tweaks have been made to its music video, which early on was pulled with out clarification by Nation Music Tv however stays accessible on YouTube. Final week, a brand new model appeared, six seconds shorter than the unique and scrubbed of stories clips exhibiting Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.

Aldean has denied that “Strive That” is “a pro-lynching tune,” or that race performs any half within the tune’s lyrics. “These references will not be solely meritless, however harmful,” he wrote on social media.

On the album chart, the Ok-pop group NewJeans beat the “Barbie” soundtrack in a photograph end.

“Get Up,” a six-track EP by NewJeans, a quintet that’s a part of the latest wave of Ok-pop acts, opens at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with the equal of 126,500 gross sales in the US, in accordance with Luminate. “Barbie: The Album,” that includes Lizzo, Dua Lipa, Sam Smith, Billie Eilish and different artists, was credited with 126,000. (The service’s publicly reported figures are rounded.)

The outcomes have been delayed by a number of days, with Billboard saying solely that there was a “processing concern” in combing by way of the info.

The breakdown of the 2 albums’ “equal” numbers — that are decided by evaluating gross sales, streams and monitor downloads — illustrates the assorted methods music is consumed nowadays, and the way totally different codecs can have an effect on the charts.

“Get Up,” like many Ok-pop releases, got here out in a wide range of collectible CD packages. Of its 126,500 equivalents, 101,000 copies have been offered as full albums, with 99 p.c of that on CD, in accordance with Billboard; songs from it have been additionally streamed 34 million instances.

“Barbie: The Album,” alternatively, offered 53,000 copies as an entire package deal — 33,000 on vinyl — and had 94 million streams.

The arrival of NewJeans and “Barbie” despatched final week’s high album, Taylor Swift’s “Converse Now (Taylor’s Model),” to No. 4, whereas Morgan Wallen’s “One Factor at a Time” falls to No. 3, the primary time in 21 weeks that it has dipped decrease than second place. Additionally this week, “Génesis,” by the Mexican songwriter Peso Pluma, is No. 5.