‘Hamilton’ Becomes First Cast Album to Log 500 Weeks on Billboard 200: 10 Cast Albums With the Longest Chart Runs

Hamilton: An American Musical this week becomes the first original cast album to log 500 weeks on the Billboard 200. The album debuted at No. 12 on the chart dated Oct. 17, 2015, which was the highest debut for a cast album in more than 50 years.  It peaked at No. 2 in July 2020, which was the highest ranking for a cast album since Hair topped the chart for 13 weeks in 1969.

Hamilton logs its 500th week on the chart just one month after the album was elected to the National Recording Registry in its first year of eligibility.

Lin-Manuel Miranda, who wrote the book, music and lyrics for Hamilton, has been showered with honors for his masterwork. He won two Tonys (best original musical score and best book of a musical), a Grammy (best musical theatre album) and the Pulitzer Prize for literature. The show’s creative team (Miranda, Thomas Kail, Alex Lacamoire and Andy Blankenbuehler) was even honored at the Kennedy Center Honors.

Miranda also won a Primetime Emmy (outstanding variety special, pre-recorded) in 2021 as a producer of a Disney TV adaptation.

To mark Hamilton’s 500-week chart achievement, we have prepared this list of the 10 cast albums with the most weeks on the Billboard 200 (which dates to March 1956). Hamilton is one of just two shows on the list where a solitary songwriter wrote both music and lyrics for the show. The other: The Music Man, written by Meredith Willson.

Alan Jay Lerner & Frederick Loewe are the only songwriter(s) with two albums in the top 10 – My Fair Lady and Camelot. Lady gave us such standards as “I Could Have Danced All Night” and “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face.” Camelot spawned “If Ever I Would Leave You” and “How to Handle a Woman.” Both shows had the same female lead – the incomparable Julie Andrews.

Here are the 10 cast albums with the most weeks on the Billboard 200.

Because of how the Billboard 200 chart is now compiled, where streaming activity is blended with album sales and track sales, albums tend to spend a longer time on the list thanks to continued streaming activity. The chart began utilizing streaming information in its methodology in December 2014. Previous to that, the chart was based solely on traditional album sales.

Also, a lengthy tracklist with multiple popular songs can help accrue large streaming totals, so albums like Hamilton (with 46 tracks) benefit from the continued weekly streams of their long tracklists.

Further, older albums (known as catalog albums; generally defined today as titles at least 18 months old), were mostly restricted from charting on the Billboard 200 from May 25, 1991-Nov. 28, 2009. Since then, catalog and current (new/recently released) albums chart together on the Billboard 200. As a result, older albums now regularly spend hundreds of weeks on the chart.