Billboard’s projection that James Newton Howard’s “The Hanging Tree” would debut within the Top 40 of its Hot 100 was a bit of an understatement.
Thanks to an impressive weekly sales count of 200,000, the track from “Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1” flies into the #12 position on the Hot 100.
The aforementioned weekly sales count, which was second only to the 342,000 moved by Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space,” provides 88% of the song’s Hot 100 chart points. The balance comes almost entirely from the song’s 2.1 million certified US streams (the song received only eight radio plays last week).
“Hunger Games” star Jennifer Lawrence sings on the track, which is the highest-charting musical release from the popular film franchise.
