Trey Songz Reaches No. 1; Adele Drops Out of Top 10

By BEN SISARIO

On the music charts this week: The fifth time is a charm for the R&B singer Trey Songz, Adele is finally bumped from the Top 10, and a South Korean pop song goes viral.

Trey Songz (real name: Tremaine Neverson) reached No. 1 on Billboard's album chart for the first time with his fifth release, “Chapter V” (Songbook/Atlantic), which opened with 135,000 sales, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Last week's top seller, 2 Chainz's “Based on a T.R.U. Story” (Def Jam), dropped to No. 2 with 48,000.

High-charting new releases include DJ Khaled's “Kiss the Ring” (Cash Money/Universal Republic), at No. 4 with 41,000 sales, and Owl City's “Midsummer Station” (Universal Republic); helped by “Good Time,” a hit song with the singer Carly Rae Jepsen, Owl City opened at No. 7 with 30,000.

After 78 weeks in the Top 10 - including 24 at No. 1 - Adele's “21” (XL/Columbia) fell to No . 12 this week with 24,000 sales. Billboard's chart experts note that with music sales still in their late-summer doldrums, “21” could still return to the Top 10 next week, but would likely soon fall out again as major new albums start to come out in September.

Taylor Swift's  latest song, “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” which had a big opening last week, holds at No. 1, although its download count has dropped by half. The song sold 307,000 copies in its second week, down from 623,000.

The most surprising song on the charts, however - and, really, the most entertaining - is “Gangnam Style” by the South Korean rapper-singer Psy. Thanks to a music video that has the lovably buffoonish Psy and his pretty backup dancers mimicking a horse trot and lasso swing, the song has become a surprise summer hit on both sides of the Pacific. (Part of the fun has been reading Western attempts to parse the phenomenon of K-Pop, South Korea's extremely popula r bubblegum genre.)

“Gangnam Style” - its title refers to an upscale neighborhood in Seoul - holds at No. 1 for a fifth week on Billboard's K-Pop chart, which was started a year ago. The song remains a huge hit on YouTube: it has been viewed 71 million times, and this week it replaces Ms. Jepsen's “Call Me Maybe” as No. 1 on YouTube's music chart.

So far, though, that has not translated into blockbuster record sales. “Gangnam Style” is No. 74 on Billboard's digital songs chart, with 23,000 downloads in the United States, but it is climbing: a week ago it was No. 158 with half as many.