No sophomore slump for Harry Styles: his second solo album, “Fine Line,” will debut atop the charts with 478,000 equivalent album units — the third biggest debut week of 2019.
Fans wanted the whole thing, too, not just piecemeal tracks: 393,000 of those units came via traditional full-album sales, according to Styles’ label, Columbia.
Only Taylor Swift and Post Malone had bigger bows this year, with 867,000 and 489,000 album units, respectively.
Styles’ opening numbers were good enough to make “Fine Line” already the sixth biggest album of the year, as measured by full traditional album sales, in just a week.
The album has also already gone No. 1 in countries including Canada, Australia, Mexico, New Zealand, Ireland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Brazil and several Southeast Asian countries, his label reports.
Styles is the rare star who’s on a marked upward trajectory in album sales. His previous effort bowed in 2017 with less than half the number of the current one — 230,000 units, with 193,000 of that number in full album sales.
In America, it’s the biggest bow for a solo artist from the UK since such tallies began being kept by Nielsen in the early ’90s.
The album has enjoyed a solid critical reception, too. Variety‘s review called Styles “one of the good guys, in how he’s defying blockbuster expectations by following his muse back into the classic rock era and casually claiming it as his own.”