The fortunes of American Idol‘s recent winners have dwindled, but one can still count on Kelly Clarkson, the show’s original champ, to rack up hit albums. The pop star, who took home the first American Idol crown in 2002 and released her first album, Thankful, the following year, debuts at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with her latest studio set, Piece by Piece. It launches with 97,000 equivalent album units in the week ending March 8, according to Nielsen Music. The album is her third visit to the penthouse, following Thankful and 2009’s All I Ever Wanted.
Clarkson now ties Carrie Underwood as the American Idol contestants with the most No. 1 LPs. The pair is followed by rocker Chris Daughtry, who logged two leaders with his band Daughtry. Four more Idol finalists each have one No. 1: Clay Aiken, Adam Lambert, Scotty McCreery and Ruben Studdard.
The last Idol finalist to earn his or her first top 10 album came in 2012, when that year’s winner, Phillip Phillips, bowed at No. 4 with his debut effort, The World From the Side of the Moon. Since then, the show has failed to launch a top 10 album from its last two seasons: 2013 champ Candice Glover saw her delayed debut, Music Speaks, peak at No. 14, while 2014 winner Caleb Johnson hit a series low with his first album, Testify, logging both the weakest sales debut (11,000) and chart bow (No. 24) for an Idol winner’s first album.
To be fair, NBC’s competing show The Voice, which debuted in 2011 and is now in its eighth season, has launched just one top 10 album: Cassadee Pope’s Frame by Frame (No. 9 in 2013). (Remarkably, The Voice‘s second-season winner, Jermaine Paul, hasn’t even released an LP. Paul won his season in May 2012.)
But, while The Voice continues to have trouble generating hits, and Idol has misfired the last few years, another competitor that has been off the air since 2013 has logged four top 10s: The X Factor. The Fox show, which ran for three seasons through December 2013 and was created by former Idol judge Simon Cowell, earned top 10s from Emblem3, Alex & Sierra and two from Fifth Harmony. The lattermost claimed its first top 10 with its debut EP, Better Together, in 2013, and logged a second with its first full-length, Reflection, this year.