Justin Bieber beats Elvis Presley’s 60-year record with release of new album Changes

Bieber broke a 60-year record that was previously held by Elvis Presley. Presley obtained the record with the release of Blue Hawaii in 1961. The album was a soundtrack for a film that Elvis released with the same title.

Elvis was 26 when he released Blue Hawaii. On March 1, Bieber will turn 26.

A similar record is held by The Beatles, as a group. The four Beatles were all below 26 when Rubber Soul was released in 1966—becoming their seventh No. 1 album in a row. They eventually went on to release 19 No. 1 albums.

Ringo Starr was 25 at the time and was the oldest member of the group while the youngest member—George—was just 22.

Bieber’s new album marks his ninth to climb to the top 10. The debut was on Feb. 14 and was able to move 231,000 units in the first week. Changes is Bieber’s first album in over four years and it was released at the same time as a documentary series on YouTube. The album follows his 2015 album, Purpose.

The success of the album has come with controversy as Bieber was in the headlines for telling fans to help his Yummy single climb streaming charts in January. Bieber asked fans to play the song on repeat and buy it multiple times in an Instagram post which was later deleted.

During the Super Bowl, Bieber also used the song to promote Chipotle, the restaurant chain, on TikTok. Critics thought that this was not aligned with TikTok’s primary focus.

Yummy however, peaked at No. 3, and was unable to reach No. 1.

Tyler Tasson of Endemic Marketing in Toronto, said that Bieber’s tactics are possibly a warning sign of how music marketing may be manipulated in the future.

“On the one hand, reaching out to your fans and engaging them to do things like streaming the album and buying singles is great, but then getting them to try to manipulate the system is a whole other thing,” said Tasson.

The Billboard’s chart used to be decided by sales alone but now relies on streaming data as well. The musicians can use this to their advantage if they already have a large following.

“One could argue that the reason Elvis got that big was also good marketing, but there was also really amazing talent there,” said Tasson.

“Now, it’s all about how you can manipulate the game in a way to get to that number on the charts.”