On the Charts: 5 Seconds of Summer Dethrone ‘Weird Al’
Man, these sad numbers are steady—album sales down 15 percent, track sales down 13 percent. Maybe Adele can come back and save us all?
BOY BAND’S CHART RUN WILL PROBABLY LAST MORE THAN 5 SECONDS: 5 Seconds of Summer has done everything right so far — which isn’t surprising, considering the Australian boy band shares a management company, and a summer tour, with One Direction. To paraphrase Lou Pearlman, imprisoned svengali behind the Backstreet Boys and ‘NSYNC, why have one boy band when you can have two? After introducing themselves with a four-song EP earlier this year, 5 Seconds’ self-titled album hit Number One with 259,000 copies this week, and due to touring and videos, it seems like the band may accomplish the rare feat of sticking around on the album charts. Aside from the Frozen soundtrack (which rose from Number Five to Number Two, with 37,000 copies, although sales dropped 15 percent) and Beyonce, almost nobody does that.
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REMEMBER WHEN EVEN NUMBER 10 SOLD MILLIONS? GOOD TIMES: Beyond 5 Seconds, sales numbers on the charts this week are brutal — “Weird Al” Yankovic‘s Mandatory Fun sold just 33,000, a drop of 68 percent, while Sam Smith‘s In the Lonely Hour had 31,000, a drop of 12 percent, and Kidz Bop 26 had 27,000, a loss of 42 percent. Poor Ed Sheeran‘s x dropped 16 percent, from Number Seven to Number 10, with just 20,000 sales — to put it in perspective, all Sheeran had to do to reach Number 10 was play one amphitheatre and sell one album to everybody in attendance.
SUMMER SLEEPER — “ALL ABOUT THAT BASS”: Mercifully, Magic’s bland-reggae anthem “Rude” dropped out of the Number One spot on Billboard‘s Digital Songs chart, selling 154,000 copies, a decrease of 21 percent. Displacing “Rude” is Jason Aldean‘s debut “Burnin’ It Down,” which sold 184,000 copies despite having no official YouTube video or registering on Aldean’s Top 10 Spotify streams. Aside from the Aldean debut, only two Top 10 singles gained sales: Nico & Vinz’ “Am I Wrong” (114,000, up 18 percent, from Number Eight to Number Five) and Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass” (103,000, up 61 percent, from Number 18 to Number Six).