After three weeks Taylor Swift has ceded her perch atop the Billboard album chart to Niall, Zayn, Liam, Harry and Louis. If those names do not ring a bell then you are likely neither a 14-year-old nor the parent or teacher of one. They are better known as the five young lads of One Direction.
That group’s second album, “Take Me Home” (Syco/Columbia), opens at No. 1 on pop charts around the world this week. In the United States, where sales are certified by Nielsen SoundScan, it sold 540,000 copies, the third-biggest opening this year after Ms. Swift’s 1.2 million last month and Mumford & Sons’ 600,000 in September.
Ms. Swift’s “Red” (Big Machine) fell to No. 2 with 145,000 copies sold, bringing its four-week total to just less than 1.9 million. In a week packed with high-charting new releases the latest “Twilight” soundtrack, “Breaking Dawn: Part 2” (Chop Shop/Atlantic), featuring songs by Passion Pit, Feist, Ellie Goulding and others, opened at No. 3 with 93,000 sales. “Trilogy” (Universal Republic) by the Weeknd, the indie R&B project led by the Canadian musician Abel Tesfaye, reached No. 4 with 86,000 sales, despite most of its songs having been released free online over the last year and a half.
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