How Did Twenty One Pilots Score Its Biggest First Week Ever With ‘Breach’?

In the mid-’10s, Twenty One Pilots became 1 of the biggest crossover acts successful popular music, scoring a trio of apical 5 hits connected the Billboard Hot 100 and topping the Billboard 200 with its Blurryface album. A decennary later, the Pilots hadn’t matched that crossover occurrence connected either chart, with nary further apical 5 singles and a fig of apical 5 albums, but nary consequent fig ones.

That is, until this week. On the Billboard 200 dated Sept. 27, the duo’s latest acceptable Breach — marking the seemingly last introduction successful the decade-long communicative the radical started with Blurryface bows astatine No. 1. The acceptable posts 200k successful first-week units, not lone besting adjacent its Blurryface full from 2015, but besides bettering the debut fig from immoderate different stone medium yet this decade.

How did the duo negociate this performance? And what different stone acts could rival that fig successful the years to come? Billboard writers reply these questions and much below.

1. Twenty One Pilots’ Breach debuts atop the Billboard 200 with a career-best 200,000 first-week units. On a standard of 1-10, however excited should Twenty One Pilots beryllium astir that performance?

Kyle Denis: 10. I don’t spot however anyone wouldn’t beryllium implicit the satellite aft pulling disconnected a career-best opening week, particularly erstwhile they debuted 16 years ago. In 2025, cracking 200k first-week is thing to scoff astatine for beauteous overmuch anyone. And it’s incredibly awesome that Twenty One Pilots did this arsenic a stone enactment without a existent crossover hit. 

Gil Kaufman: 10. For a radical that — as they noted astatine their tour kick-off successful Cincinnati past week — has been astir for much than 15 years and ne'er knows if its caller euphony volition hit, this is simply a immense deal. Whether you judge the perpetual “rock is dead” mantra oregon not, stone has been mostly missing from the apical of the 200 arsenic of late. Landing the biggest debut for immoderate stone LP successful six years is simply a monumental feat for a radical whose illustration occurrence hasn’t ever matched its steady, and still-growing, unrecorded appeal.

Jason Lipshutz: A 10. This is simply a connection opening week — a seasoned creator returning with a ton of excitement and a physical-product promo blitz, scoring a notably immense debut number, and reasserting their commercialized powerfulness unequivocally. Twenty One Pilots person been earning apical 5 medium debuts for implicit a decade, but Breach becoming their archetypal chart-topper since Blurryface — which was their mainstream breakthrough successful 2015, with their career-best first-week full — is the benignant of accomplishment that tin re-frame the bequest of a radical for those who hadn’t been paying adjacent attention. More artists privation they could notch a game-changing No. 1 debut similar this one.

Andrew Unterberger: Gotta beryllium a 10, right? A fig adjacent fractional arsenic large would’ve inactive been beauteous awesome for the duo astatine this constituent successful its career, but 200k with nary large hits oregon pop-cultural momentum down it? That’s a jaw-dropping number, and 1 that shows however successfully Twenty One Pilots has tended to its fanbase implicit the years, making definite that adjacent astatine times erstwhile not galore caller fans were jumping connected that nary 1 aged was ever jumping off, and continuing to slowly-but-surely turn the halfway assemblage to wherever it is today. ...