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Barbra Streisand Makes Chart History With ‘Release Me 2’: First Woman to Make Billboard 200 Charts for the Past 6 Decades

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Barbra Streisand Makes Chart History With ‘Release Me 2’: First Woman to Make Billboard 200 Charts for the Past 6 Decades

Barbra Streisand’s new album, Release Me 2, premieres at No. 15 on the Billboard 200 list, adding another chapter to her illustrious Billboard chart career (dated Aug. 21). She becomes the first woman to have a new top 20 — or even top 40 — album in every decade from the 1960s through the 2020s with the release.

Bob Dylan, Streisand’s labelmate, is the only other musician to achieve that achievement in the previous 60 years.

The compilation features archival recordings from Streisand’s vault, including duets with Willie Nelson (“I’d Want It to Be You”), Barry Gibb (“If Only You Were Mine”), “Be Aware” and “One Day (A Prayer),” which she believes “still speak to our collective sense of humanity” today. According to MRC Data, the album was released on August 6 by Columbia/Legacy and debuted with 22,000 equivalent album units in the United States in the week ending August 12. It’s the follow-up to the 2012 album Release Me, which debuted and reached No. 7 on the Billboard 200.

The eight-time Grammy winner’s most recent triumph adds to her long list of accomplishments with Billboard. With Release Me 2, Streisand has 58 top-40 albums, the most of any female artist in history. Aretha Franklin comes in second with 26.

Frank Sinatra has the most top 40 albums among both men and women, with 58. With 11 No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200.

The Barbra Streisand Album debuted at No. 17 on the Billboard 200 list 58 years ago this week, on the chart dated Aug. 17, 1963. It eventually reached No. 9 on the Nov. 8, 1963 chart.

In June, she told PEOPLE, “Working on this 2nd volume of Release Me has been a lovely walk down memory lane,” “A chance to revisit, and in some cases, add a finishing instrumental touch to songs that still resonate for me in meaningful ways.”

Based on multimetric consumption as measured in equivalent album units, the Billboard 200 list ranks the most popular albums of the week in the United States. Album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA), and streaming equivalent albums are all counted as units (SEA). Each unit represents one album sale, ten individual album tracks sold, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams generated by album songs.

There are also covers for Carole King’s “You Light Up My Life” and Randy Newman’s “Living Without You.”

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