Kirstie Maldonado is a woman on top… of the charts…
The 24-year-old half-Mexican, part Spanish-American singer and her fellow Pentatonix members have scored their second No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart.
The vocal group’s Pentatonix Christmas rises 2-1 on the latest list, earning 206,000 equivalent album units in the week ending December 22 (up 32 percent), according to Nielsen Music. Of that sum, 185,000 were in traditional album sales (up 33 percent).
It’s the first holiday album at No. 1 in five years, since Michael Buble’s Christmas ruled the tally for five consecutive weeks on the charts dated December 10, 2011, through January 7, 2012.
The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption, which includes traditional album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA).
Pentatonix previously led the list with its self-titled album, which debuted atop the list in 2015.
A Pentatonix Christmas was released through RCA Records on October 21. It debuted at No. 3 on the November 12-dated chart, and has never ranked lower than No. 6 on the list in its nine weeks on the chart.
The album benefits from not only holiday-fueled purchases, as well as a sale price in the iTunes Store (for just $7.99), but also a number of television appearances from the group during the tracking week. The act’s December 7 performance on ABC‘s Jimmy Kimmel Live! repeated on Dec. 16; NBC‘s A Pentatonix Christmas Special (which premiered on December 14) received an encore airing on December 17; they sang on NBC’s America’s Got Talent Holiday Spectacular on December 19; and they performed on Fox News’ Fox & Friends on December 21 and the syndicated Rachael Ray Show on December 22.
A Pentatonix Christmas is the group’s sixth top 10 album overall, and third holiday effort to reach the region, following 2014’s No. 2-peaking That’s Christmas to Me, and the 2013 PTXmas EP, which climbed to No. 7.
Pentatonix’s latest No. 1 also earns the largest sales week for a holiday album in two years, since Pentatonix’s previous holiday set, That’s Christmas to Me, sold 203,000 copies in the week ending December 21, 2014. In fact, the last acts that weren’t Pentatonix to sell more in a single week with a holiday album were Michael Buble and Justin Bieber during the week ending December 25, 2011. That week, Buble sold 467,000 copies of Christmas, while Bieber moved 225,000 copies of his Under the Mistletoe.
Further, A Pentatonix Christmas is the first album to earn its first week at No. 1 by climbing there — as opposed to debuting or re-entering at No. 1–since Rihanna’s Anti vaulted from No. 27 to No. 1 in its second chart week, on the February 20-dated list.
Also notable, since A Pentatonix Christmas reaches No. 1 in its ninth week on the list, it logs the slowest continuous climb to No. 1 (thus excepting re-entries at No. 1 from Prince’s The Very Best of Prince and Chris Stapleton’s Traveller) since the March 16, 2013-dated list, when Bruno Mars’ Unorthodox Jukebox reached No. 1 in its 12th week.