One Direction Members Just Made Major Boy Band History
Remember when boy bands would break up and devastate entire fan bases? And individual members would fade away into pop culture obscurity after failing to recapture the band's collective magic in solo form? And sometimes, one breakout member might rise to superstar status while the others wouldn't get even close? Consider the tragic post-group pop narrative ancient history.
Case in point: One Direction made boy band history in 2017 after all five original members released songs that hit the Top 40, Nielsen reports.
Zayn led the pack with his collaboration with Taylor Swift, "I Don't Wanna Live Forever," off the Fifty Shades Darker soundtrack, which garnered 350 million streams and 1.4 million purchases to date. Niall Horan's "Slow Hands" had the second most sales, pushing 1 million purchases.
Meanwhile, Horan's hit single counted 214.5 million streams, a few million short of Liam Payne's "Strip That Down" featuring Quavo, which pulled 251.7 million streams. (In somewhat of a contrast to his impressive streaming data, Payne's solo debut pulled 805,000 sales.)
Harry Styles' classic rock-tinged "Sign of the Times" was another heavy hitter, pushing 594,000 sales and more than 182 million streams. Rounding out the One Direction crew (which is technically on a hiatus), Louis Tomlinson's Bebe Rexha and Digital Farm Animals collaboration, "Back to You," hit 122,400 sales and 109.2 million streams.
However, this isn't the first time the band has made history, even while on break. In October 2017, the group became the first boy band since The Beatles to have three members reach the top of the Billboard 200 chart with solo albums.
Horan's Flicker, Styles' eponymous album and Zayn's Mind of Mine (2016) each hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 upon their release.
In 2012, One Direction broke their first record by becoming the first U.K. to debut at No. 1 with their first album, Up All Night.
Keep it up, boys!
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