Metallica Dominate Billboard 2017 Year-End Rock Charts
Metallica's Hardwired ... to Self Destruct album may have been released in the fall of 2016, but it truly dominated the rock world during the calendar year of 2017. Billboard has released their year-end charts, and Metallica head up to the two most key rock charts for 2017.
The band leads a strong list of veteran acts on the Hard Rock Albums Artists chart. The chart combines the radio play, sales data and streaming data of an artist to come to their final tally, with Metallica besting two other perennial favorites -- Linkin Park and Foo Fighters.
The Top 10 also shows the strength of bands with healthy catalogs, as acts like Queen, Guns N' Roses, Led Zeppelin and Journey all made the cut despite not releasing any new music in quite some time. See the Top 10 Hard Rock Albums Artists of 2017 below.
1. Metallica
2. Linkin Park
3. Foo Fighters
4. Queen
5. Guns N' Roses
6. Nickelback
7. Disturbed
8. Five Finger Death Punch
9. Led Zeppelin
10. Journey
The other major chart for the year is the Top Rock Albums chart, which Metallica also led with Hardwired ... to Self-Destruct. As with the Hard Rock Albums Artist chart, the Top Rock Album chart focuses on a mix of radio play, sales data and streaming data. It was a tight race, with crossover alternative acts Imagine Dragons and Twenty One Pilots both making their mark with Evolve and Blurryface in the second and third positions.
The next major rock artist on the list was Linkin Park, as their chart-topping One More Light album finished seventh for the year. The band's catalog also fared well, with Hybrid Theory being the No. 20 album for the year and Meteora checking in at No. 46. Like Linkin Park, Metallica's current success also aided a past effort, as their self-titled "Black Album" came in at No. 16. Two other major rock albums of note -- Foo Fighters' Concrete and Gold and Queens of the Stone Age's Villains -- came in at No. 29 and No. 41 respectively. See the full list here.
Metallica Albums Ranked