Bad Bunny’s ‘Un Verano Sin Ti’ Is This Year’s Top Billboard 200 Album: The Year in Charts

Bad Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Ti is 2022’s year-end No. 1 on the Billboard 200 Albums chart.

The blockbuster album was released on May 6, 2022 and debuted at No. 1 on the weekly Billboard 200 chart (dated May 21). It marked just the second all-Spanish-language album to reach No. 1 on the weekly Billboard 200, following Bad Bunny’s own El Ultimo Tour del Mundo in 2020.

Un Verano Sin Ti spent 13 nonconsecutive weeks atop the list in 2022 – the most weeks at No. 1 for any album since 2016, when Drake’s Views also notched 13 weeks in the lead. Un Verano Sin Ti was so popular, it never left the top two positions on the weekly Billboard 200 for its first 24 weeks on the chart – the first time any album had spent its first six months in the top two.

Explore All of Billboard’s 2022 Year-End Charts

Un Verano Sin Ti is also the first Latin album to finish as the year-end No. 1 Billboard 200 Album. (Latin titles are defined as those that have charted on Billboard’s Top Latin Albums chart.)

In addition, Un Verano Sin Ti also places at No. 1 on the year-end Independent Albums, Top Latin Albums and Latin Rhythm Albums charts.

Billboard’s year-end music recaps represent aggregated metrics for each artist, title, label and music contributor on the weekly charts dated Nov. 20, 2021 through Nov. 12, 2022. The rankings for Luminate-based recaps reflect equivalent album units, airplay, sales or streaming during the weeks that the titles appeared on a respective chart during the tracking year. Any activity registered before or after a title’s chart run isn’t considered in these rankings. That methodology details, and the November-November time period, account for some of the difference between these lists and the calendar-year recaps that are independently compiled by Luminate.

At No. 2 on the 2022 year-end Billboard 200 Albums ranking is Adele’s 30, which spent six weeks at No. 1 on the weekly Billboard 200 during the 2022 chart year. The third-biggest album on the year-end chart is 2021’s top album, Morgan Wallen’s Dangerous: The Double Album.

Taylor Swift doubles up in the 2022 year-end top five, as her most recent release, Midnights, is No. 4, while her 2021 release Red (Taylor’s Version), is No. 5. It’s the first time one act has two of the top five year-end biggest albums since 1975, when John Denver was Nos. 3 and 4 with John Denver’s Greatest Hits and Back Home Again.

Both Midnights and Red (Taylor’s Version) debuted at No. 1 on the weekly Billboard 200, with the former charting just two weeks on the list during the 2022 chart year. Midnights charts so high on the year-end ranking from only two weeks of charting activity thanks to its incredibly large first two weeks, in terms of overall equivalent album units earned.

Notably, in the last 15 years (2008-22), Swift has placed at least one album in the year-end Billboard 200 Albums recap in all but two years. She’s only missed a top 10 year-end roundup in that span of time in 2016 and 2017. (The absence in those years was owed mostly to her not releasing any new albums for three years between the bows of 1989 In October of 2014 and Reputation in November of 2017.) In 2016, her highest-ranking album was 1989, at No. 17, while in 2017, her top-performing set was also 1989, at No. 101.

The Encanto soundtrack is No. 6 on the 2022 Billboard 200 Albums recap, followed by Harry Styles’ Harry’s House, Olivia Rodrigo’s Sour, Drake’s Certified Lover Boy and The Weeknd’s The Highlights. Three albums in the 2022 year-end top 10 are repeats from 2021’s recap: Dangerous (No. 1 in 2021), Sour (No. 2 in 2021) and Certified Lover Boy (No. 5 in 2021).

Of 2022’s top 10 Billboard 200 Albums, the only title that didn’t reach No. 1 on the weekly chart is The Weeknd’s 18-track greatest hits set The Highlights, which has so-far peaked at No. 2. It’s the first hits compilation from a single artist to finish in the year-end top 10 since 2014, when Garth Brooks’ 77-track covers/retrospective boxed set Blame It All on My Roots: Five Decades of Influences was No. 9. The last conventional greatest hits album to rank among the year’s top 10 albums was another Brooks effort, the 34-track The Ultimate Hits, which closed 2008 as the No. 10 title of the year.

Keith Caulfield

Billboard