Chart Wizards: Kansas Returns to Billboard 200 — And Toto Too

Veteran rock bands Kansas and Toto both return to the Billboard 200, making pun-lovers and chart geeks surely elicit oohs and… Oz.

(Get it? Kansas … Toto … The Wizard of Oz … “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”? Sigh. We crack ourselves up.)

Kansas’ new Miracles Out of Nowhere, which doubles as the soundtrack to the same-named documentary about the band, bows at No. 61 on the Billboard 200 dated April 11. It moved 9,000 units in the week ending March 29, according to Nielsen Music. It’s the group’s first visit to the chart since 1988’s In the Spirit of Things peaked at No. 114 and its highest rank since Power hit No. 35 in 1987.

Kansas collected three top 10 albums between 1977 and 1979, going as high as No. 4 with 1978’s Point of Know Return.

As for Toto, the three-time Grammy-winning act returns to the chart for the first time since 1990, as Toto XIV bows at No. 98 (6,000 units earned). The new studio effort is the group’s first release after a 10-year recording hiatus. The band was last on the Billboard 200 with the greatest-hits album Past to Present 1977-1990, which reached No. 153 in 1990. Its last higher-ranking effort was its preceding release, 1988’s The Seventh One, peaking at No. 64 that year.

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The group’s highest-charting effort was its smash Toto IV set in 1982, which reached No. 4 (and won the Grammy for album of the year).

For good measure, the last time Kansas and Toto were on the Billboard 200 chart together was on the list dated May 16, 1987.

Following the yellow brick road of Wizard of Oz-related fun, the movie’s iconic theme song remains as vital as ever and extends a Billboard chart record. Israel “Iz” Kamakawiwo’ole‘s version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” sung in the legendary 1939 film by Judy Garland, leads the World Digital Songs chart for a 207th week. That’s the most weeks a song has ever spent on any Billboard chart.