Bieber Beats 1D: The Comeback of the Year

Justin Bieber’s Purpose will beat One Direction’s Made in the A.M. in the highly watched race to claim the #1 spot on the Billboard 200.

Billboard won’t announce its final sales tallies until Sunday, but Hits, a rival music industry trade publication, has already announced its final numbers. The two sources are usually very close in their findings.

According to Hits, Bieber’s album sold 504K copies in its first week, while 1D’s album sold 414K. If Billboard’s results are similar, this will be the first time that two albums have each sold 400K or more in their first week since September 2007, when, in another closely monitored race, Kanye West’s Graduation sold 957K and 50 Cent’s Curtis moved 691K.

Digital track sales and streaming activity gave Bieber an additional 116K in “equivalent sales.” Track and streaming figures added 56K to 1D’s aforementioned tally.

Bieber’s tally is the biggest one-week sales tally so far in 2015. It tops Drake’s If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late, which sold 495K copies in its first week in February.

Bieber will hold the 2015 sales record for exactly one week. Adele’s just-released 25 is expected to sell at least 2 million copies in its first week. It may even top *NSYNC’s No Strings Attached, which sold 2,416,000 copies in its first week in March 2000 — a record many thought would never be topped.

This is the biggest one-week sales total of Bieber’s career. His previous best mark came with his last proper studio album, Believe, which sold 374K in its first week in June 2012. But in the years between the two albums, Bieber’s standing plummeted. He made the headlines far more often because of imbecilic stunts like egging a neighbor’s house than he did for his music.

Here’s an example of how far Bieber’s stock fell in the hiatus between studio albums: In 2013, he embarked on a 10-week digital download campaign dubbed Music Mondays, in which one new song was released every Monday night. None of the songs made the top 10 on the Hot 100, and the last seven didn’t even dent the top 40. All 10 of these songs (and five others) were compiled on an album titled Journals, which was a digital-only release at year’s end. Embarrassingly, it didn’t make the Billboard 200. Reviews of the album were tepid. Alison Stewart of The Washington Post wrote: “Justin Bieber ends a bad year with a bad album.”

Hit records, sporting a more mature, mainstream sound, helped turn things around for Bieber. He has had three top 10 hits this year. His new music has drawn comparisons to that of such other onetime teenybopper stars as George Michael and Justin Timberlake, both of whom made the transition to adult pop stardom.

Bieber’s turnaround began with “Where Are Ü Now,” which was produced and performed by dance music producers Skrillex and Diplo under their collaborative name Jack Ü. The song rose to #8 on the Hot 100. Bieber followed it with two even bigger hits, “What Do You Mean?,” which debuted at #1 (becoming the first #1 of his career), and “Sorry,” which has climbed as high as #2.

Purpose is Bieber’s sixth #1 album. This allows him to break away from Drake as the Canadian artist with the most album chart-toppers. Drake has had five (counting his recent collaboration with Future).

By debuting at #2, 1D broke a string of four consecutive #1 albums. 1D was the first group to reach #1 with its first four studio albums since the Monkees in the mid-1960s. The Kingston Trio stands alone as the only group ever to reach #1 with its first five studio albums. The folk/pop trio had that run from 1958 to 1960, when Eisenhower was President.

Here are three consolation notes for 1D (and their fans):

Made in the A.M. will have outsold the group’s previous studio album, FOUR, which sold 387K copies in its first week a year ago.

According to Hits, Made in the A.M. sold more physical copies than Purpose. It sold 165K physical copies, compared to 90K for Purpose. (Purpose crushed Made in the A.M. in the digital realm: 414K vs. 250K.)
Finally, 1D finished ahead of Bieber in its native U.K. But even there it was close. According to the Official Charts Co., 1D sold 93K albums in its first week in the U.K., compared to 90K for Bieber. It’s 1D’s fourth consecutive #1 album in the U.K.

P.S.: Is it just a coincidence that the two biggest first-week sales battles in recent years each pitted two similar acts—a pair of hot rappers in 2007 and a pair of maturing teen stars in the current case? Probably not. If the two acts had little in common, the races wouldn’t have captured so much media and fan interest.