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Sam Smith's album Hazel Eyes misses the Billboard 200 entirely

A decade of top 10 placements ends even as the record ranks sixth in the week's new studio sales.

Sam Smith

Sam Smith sings at a mic stand in a black coat with fur cuffs, three backing singers in black behind them and a white colonnade beyond.
Sam Smith performing on the South Lawn of the White House at the Respect for Marriage Act signing, December 2022. Photo: The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Sam Smith's Hazel Eyes did not chart on the Billboard 200 this week. Not low, not outside the top 10: it was absent from the all-genre chart altogether, which is a first for a five-time Grammy winner.

The run it ends started with 2014's In the Lonely Hour and held for a decade. Their previous lowest-charting album was 2023's Gloria, which debuted at No. 7 on the strength of the house-leaning hit "Unholy."

The absence is stranger because the album did sell. Released on August 21, Hazel Eyes appeared on Billboard's latest Top Album Sales chart as the week's sixth top-selling new studio project. That chart counts pure sales only and ignores streaming entirely, which is where the gap between the two results sits.

Hazel Eyes carries the singles "My Guy," "Oh Mother," "Love Is a Stillness," "When He's Gone," "Constant Companion" and "To Be Free." It is also the first Smith studio album with no Hot 100 hit attached to it, which explains more about the streaming shortfall than the sales figure does.

Three years separated it from Gloria. We covered the release itself in Sam Smith releases new album Hazel Eyes and one of its singles in Sam Smith puts out a single called When He's Gone. More pop chart coverage is on the genre hub.

The facts

  • Hazel Eyes did not appear on the Billboard 200 this week.
  • It ends a top 10 run that began with 2014's In the Lonely Hour.
  • Smith's previous lowest-charting album, Gloria, debuted at No. 7 in 2023.
  • Hazel Eyes was released on August 21, 2026.
  • It ranked sixth on the pure-sales chart among new studio releases that week.
  • It is Smith's first studio album with no Hot 100 hit.

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