The Weeknd lands first Billboard number one album with second-best opening sales week of the year

Soulful The Weeknd has rocketed to the top of the album charts with the second-best opening week sales of the year.

Beauty Behind the Madness bows at number one on the Billboard 200 with a massive 412,000 equivalent sales.

Only Drake's If You're Reading This It's Too Late had better first-week sales in 2015. He debuted at the top of the countdown with 535,000 units sold.

The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week based on multi-metric consumption, which includes traditional album sales, track equivalent albums and streaming equivalent albums.

Newcomer Halsey, who recently wrapped up a tour with Imagine Dragons and will be on the road with The Weeknd later this year (15), debuts Badlands at two, while Luke Bryan's former number one album, Kill the Lights, drops to three, and Taylor Swift's 1989 climbs back into the top five at four thanks to her successes at last week's (30Aug15) MTV Video Music Awards, where she picked up four major awards and dominated the ceremony in Los Angeles.

Dr. Dre's Compton rounds out the new top five, while last week's (30Aug15) chart-topper, Disturbed's Immortalized, drops to 10.