5 Seconds of Summer’s ‘CALM’ rules U.K., Australia charts
5 Seconds of Summer enjoy a hot start with CALM, which tops the U.K. and Australian album charts on debut and just misses out on No. 1 in the U.S.
CALM (Interscope) beats Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia by the tightest of margins — just 550 chart units — to give 5SOS their second U.K. crown and honours as the first Australian act to rule Britannia this year.
To put that margin into some perspective, CALM shifted 12,000 copies on cassette in its first week. Indeed, 5SOS fans love to physical stuff. According to the Official Charts Company, 83% of CALM’s Week one total came from hard copies: CDs, cassettes and vinyl.
5SOS previously ruled the Official U.K. Albums Chart in 2015 with Sounds Good Feels Good.
“What an astonishing achievement and what a true testament to the most brilliant fan base in the world. A UK Number 1 album,” the Sydney pop-punk outfit tell the Official Charts Company.
C A L M becomes @5SOS' third Number 1 on the Official Scottish Albums Chart ???????????????????????????? #5SOSCALM https://t.co/ipoJwERzYW pic.twitter.com/etTtBMh1Rw
— Official Charts (@officialcharts) April 5, 2020
It’s the first Australian studio album to hit No. 1 in the U.K. for two years. Kylie Minogue last did it with her studio album Golden, which reached the summit in April 2018 (Kylie also went to the top in mid-2019 with her career retrospective, Step Back In Time: The Definitive Collection).
5SOS’s CALM finished just 550 chart sales ahead of Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia to claim the Number 1 on this week’s Official Albums Chart: https://t.co/Bwy42P7a3d pic.twitter.com/3ATuwopMJL
— Official Charts (@officialcharts) April 4, 2020
It’s a similar story on this side of the globe, with CALM (via Interscope Records/EMI Music Australia) taking out top spot on the ARIA Albums Chart ahead of new LPs from Dua Lipa and Pearl Jam.
For Ashton Irwin, Calum Hood, Luke Hemmings and Michael Clifford, it’s their fourth homegrown No. 1, a feat that draws them level with Silverchair as the only Australian groups to have their first four studio sets debut at No. 1.
The luck runs out in the United States, where 5SOS were on fire with their first three albums hitting No. 1 on the Billboard 200, a record for a group (non vocal). CALM this week flies to No. 2 with 133,000 equivalent album units, just behind The Weeknd’s After Hours, which bagged 138,000, a winning margin of about 5,000 units in the world’s biggest music market.
It’s worth noting CALM went in at early, at No. 62, the previous week when 11,000 CDs from a concert ticket/album sale redemption were delivered in the tracking cycle ending March 26. That’s a big whoops.
This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.