Red Hot Chili Peppers' Unlimited Love is the best-selling rock album in over a year.
The record debuts at number one on the Billboard 200 with a total of 97,500 equivalent album units, 82,500 of which were traditional album sales. The last rock artist to beat that figure was Beatles legend Paul McCartney, whose 2020 solo effort McCartney III moved 107,000 units -- 104,000 of which were album sales -- upon its chart debut in January 2021.
Unlimited Love takes the throne atop the Billboard 200 a week after Machine Gun Kelly's Mainstream Sellout debuted at number one, marking the first time in nearly five years that two rock albums have bowed at the top spot in consecutive weeks. You have to go back to 2017 for the last time that happened, when The Killers' Wonderful Wonderful hit number one after Foo Fighters' Concrete and Gold did the same a week earlier.
Surprisingly, Unlimited Love is only the second RHCP album to top the Billboard 200. The first was 2006's Stadium Arcadium, which was notably the last album to feature guitarist John Frusciante before he left the Peppers in 2009. Unlimited Love marks the band's first album with Frusciante back in the fold since he returned in late 2019.
RHCP will launch a global stadium tour in support of Unlimited Love beginning with a European run in June, followed by a U.S. leg kicking off in July.