Grateful Dead’s Dave’s Picks Vol. 55 debuts on four Billboard charts, including No. 4 on Top Album Sales and No. 28 on the Billboard 200, driven entirely by sales. Members of the rock group Grateful Dead are Bill Kreutzman (striped shirt), Jerry Garcia (black shirt and jacket), Mickey Hart (“God is Sound” T-shirt), Phil Lesh (white T-shirt), Bob Weir (Duke sweatshirt), and Brent Mydland. (Photo by © Roger Ressmeyer/CORBIS/VCG via Getty Images)
Corbis/VCG via Getty Images
The Grateful Dead may have called it quits decades ago, but the band’s fans haven’t slowed down when it comes to buying the group’s music, especially live sets. This week in America, the rock icons are back on multiple Billboard charts with another archival win, proving once again that the demand for music of any kind from the jam musicians is as strong as ever.
Dave’s Picks Volume 55 Opens High
Dave’s Picks Volume 55 launches on four different Billboard rankings this frame, and it starts inside the top 10 on all but one of those charts. The live album debuts at No. 4 on the Top Album Sales chart, making it one of the bestselling titles in the U.S. It also launches at No. 5 on the Top Rock Albums ranking and No. 6 on the Top Rock & Alternative Albums list.
Sales Powered the Latest Grateful Dead Album
Like most recent Grateful Dead sets, this one skipped streaming services entirely, so all of its 19,000 units, according to Luminate, are traditional sales. That figure was large enough to send the set to No. 28 on the Billboard 200, the main albums list that accounts for overall consumption.
Dave’s Picks Volume 55 Adds to the Band’s Milestones
Dave’s Picks Volume 55 is the band’s forty-seventh top 10 on the Top Album Sales chart. The group is inching toward 50 appearances inside that tier, a number only a handful of acts have come even close to.
On the genre-specific rankings, this new collection becomes the Grateful Dead’s fifty-sixth top 10 on both the Top Rock Albums and Top Rock & Alternative Albums charts.
While its top-tier count is slightly lower on the Top Album Sales tally, the group has appeared on that roster more frequently when compared to the rock lists. Volume 55 is the band’s one-hundred-and-thirty-third title to hit that all-genre sales list. On the Billboard 200, the group has also charted more than 100 titles throughout its long and winding career.
Dave’s Picks Volume 55 Scores a Major Debut
Among this week’s new arrivals on the Top Album Sales chart, Dave’s Picks Volume 55 comes in as the third-highest debut. Only The Star Chapter: Together by Tomorrow X Together, which opens at No. 1, and Tyler Childers’ Snipe Hunter at No. 2, land higher. JackBoys 2 by JackBoys and Travis Scott keeps one rung above the Grateful Dead at No. 3.
The Dave’s Picks Series Remains a Collector Favorite
The Dave’s Picks series has become a staple for collectors, with each volume offering a freshly unearthed concert pulled from the Grateful Dead’s deep archive. Curated by longtime archivist David Lemieux, the series has followed a consistent release schedule for more than a decade, and it continues to sell out, usually due to limited physical pressings.
