The Rematch: One Direction to Bump Taylor Swift From #1... Again
One Direction's fourth album, FOUR, is on track to enter next week’s Billboard 200 album chart at #1. It will displace Taylor Swift's 1989, which has spent its first three weeks at #1. If that sounds faintly familiar, there’s good reason for that. One Direction’s 2012 album, Take Me Home, bumped Swift’s Red out of the #1 spot after it, too, spent its first three weeks at #1.
The plot thickens: Swift’s new album includes a song titled “Style,” which many have viewed as a comment on her relationship with One Direction’s Harry Styles.
FOUR is on track to sell 400K or more copies in its first week. That would be the second-biggest one-week sales tally so far this year, behind only 1989, which sold a whopping 1,287,000 copies in its first week. It will be the biggest one-week sales tally so far this year for an album by a group or duo. That title had been held by Coldplay's Ghost Stories (383K).
Based on current sales projections, FOUR will fall short of the One Direction’s two most recent albums in first-week sales. The group’s sophomore album, Take Me Home, sold 540K copies in its first week. Its third album, Midnight Memories, sold 546K copies in its first week. Big hit singles preceded both of those albums. “Live While We’re Young” had reached #3 prior to the release of Take Me Home. “Best Song Ever” and “Story Of My Life” had both cracked the top 10 prior to the release of Midnight Memories. By contrast, “Steal My Girl,” the highest-charting single prior so far from FOUR, has topped out at #13.
One Directionwillbecome the first boy band in chart history to land four #1 albums. Four earlier boy bands—New Kids On The Block, Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC and Jonas Brothers—each had two #1 albums.
One Direction will also have a longer span of #1 albums than any of these previous boy bands. One Direction’s #1 albums will span more than two years and eight months. That may not sound like a lot, but boy bands usually have such short lives that boy-band years are a little like dog years. Backstreet Boys’s first and last appearances at #1 on The Billboard 200 spanned a little more than 18 months. *NSYNC’s spanned 16 months. JoBros’s and New Kids’s each spanned about 10 months.
One Direction will become the third group to reach #1 with its first four studio albums. They’ll follow the Kingston Trio, which achieved the feat with its first five studio albums in 1958-‘60, and The Monkees, which topped the chart with its first four albums in 1966-‘67.
One Direction and The Monkees have a lot in common. Both are TV creations. One Direction was formed during the 2010 edition of the U.K. talent show The X Factor. The Monkees were assembled to star in the NBC sitcom that debuted in September 1966.
Also, both groups include(d) one member who was of a different nationality than the other members. Irishman Niall Horan is the only non-Englishman in One Direction. Englishman Davy Jones was the only non-American in The Monkees.
Here’s something the two groups don’t have in common: The week the Monkees landed their fourth #1 album, they also landed their third #1 single on the Hot 100. One Direction is still looking for its first #1 single.
FOUR will be the third variation of that title to reach #1. Foreigner and Beyoncé both had #1 albums titled 4. Huey Lewis & the News's Fore! hit #1 in October 1986.
FOUR is also set to enter The Official U.K. album chart at #1. That would make it the group’s third consecutive album to top the charts in both the U.S. and the U.K. (The group’s first album, Up All Night, peaked at #2 in the U.K.) One Direction will be the first boy band to land three transatlantic #1 albums.
