Fifty years after it was first released, the Beatles’ classic Abbey Road has returned to the charts, coming in at No. 3 on both the Billboard 200 and the Rolling Stone 200 after it was reissued on Sept. 27 to celebrate the anniversary.
It’s the album’s first time in the top 10 since 1970. (It previously spent 11 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in late 1969 and early 1970.) But the record has become a staple on the charts over the years, spending 329 weeks total on the Billboard 200.
Abbey Road moved 81,000 units the week ending Oct. 3, with 70,000 of those units coming in the form of album sales. (Units consist of traditional physical album sales, digital sales and streaming numbers.)
The reissue features the album’s original 17 tracks remixed by Giles Martin, the son of Beatles producer George Martin, as well as 23 demos and session recordings. It’s the latest in a series of 50th anniversary Beatles reissues, following the White Album (2018) and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (2017).
Last month, an audio recording revealed that the Beatles actually had tentative plans to record another album after Abbey Road. “The books have always told us that they knew Abbey Road was their last album and they wanted to go out on an artistic high. But no – they’re discussing the next album,” writer/historian Mark Lewisohn said. “And you think that John is the one who wanted to break them up but, when you hear this, he isn’t. Doesn’t that rewrite pretty much everything we thought we knew?”
To this day, The Beatles hold the record for the most No. 1s in the history of the Billboard 200 chart, with 19.
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