5 Seconds of Summer Opens at No. 1

— July 30, 2014 0 2

5 Seconds of Summer Opens at No. 1

From left, Michael Clifford, Luke Robert Hemmings and Calum Hood of 5 Seconds of Summer in New York in April. Brian Harkin for The New York Times

A few years ago, the wavy-haired teenage guys in the Australian band 5 Seconds of Summer were unknowns in the sea of YouTube, uploading videos of themselves giggling their way through Chris Brown covers.

Now, after being taken under the wing — and the same management — of One Direction, the state-of-the-art wavy-haired boy band, 5 Seconds of Summer have become four guys with a polished pop-punk sound, a full repertory of slightly naughty hits and a No. 1 record. (And their hair, of course, is still great.)

The group’s self-titled debut album, released by Capitol, sold 259,000 copies in its first week, according to Nielsen SoundScan, a strong showing in what has otherwise been a summer of doldrums for the music industry. On Wednesday, 5 Seconds of Summer — or 5SOS, as its young fans are more likely to tweet and text — announced that next summer it will embark on its first headlining tour of the United States and Canada; for those who can’t wait, it will play a few shows this November in Phoenix and Los Angeles.

The rest of the chart this week is not nearly as impressive.

Disney’s “Frozen” soundtrack is still holding in the upper rungs after 35 weeks in stores, as much because of the film’s continued popularity as to the fact that a depressed albums market has greatly lowered the sales threshold for a Top 10 album. “Frozen” rose three spots to No. 2 on the latest chart, even though its 37,000 sales actually represented a 15 percent drop from the week before.

Weird Al Yankovic’s “Mandatory Fun” (RCA), which last week became his first No. 1 in a three-decade career — as well as the first comedy album to top the chart in more than 50 years — fell two spots to No. 3 with 33,000 sales. The British singer Sam Smith rose two spots to No. 4 with 31,000 sales of “In the Lonely Hour” (Capitol). And the 26th volume of the family-friendly “Kidz Bop” series on the Razor & Tie label sold 27,000 copies, slipping one spot to No. 5 in its second week out.

The rapper Common opened at No. 6 with “Nobody’s Smiling” (Artium/Def Jam), selling 24,000, and the Texas metal band Crown the Empire bowed at No. 7 with its new album “The Resistance: Rise of the Runaways” (Rise), selling around 24,000. (SoundScan’s publicly reported figures are rounded.)

“Rude,” the reggae-pop song by the band Magic!, held the No. 1 spot on the singles chart for a third week, with 154,000 downloads and nine million streams.

Reference: The New York Times