Another Aussie Band Just Reached Number One In America

As we reported last week, industry forecasters in the US recently predicted that Sydney pop rockers 5 Seconds Of Summer’s latest album, Sounds Good Feels Good, would shift around 185,000 equivalent album units in the week ending 29th October.

The results, as reported by Billboard, exceeded predictions. The band’s sophomore effort managed to move 192,000 equivalent album units in the week ending 29th October, according to Nielsen Music. Of that sum, 179,000 were in pure album sales.

So what does this all mean? 5 Seconds Of Summer are now the latest homegrown Australian band to have a Number 1 album in America, continuing the serious roll that Australian artists seem to be on Stateside.

As we recently noted, Australians have been doing big things overseas lately. Vance Joy alone has sold an incredible 2 million copies of the ukelele-driven hit ‘Riptide’ in the US, earning the young songwriter a double platinum certification.

Meanwhile, APRA AMCOS, the organisation responsible for collecting licensing royalties on behalf of Australian musicians and songwriters, released their Year In Review last month, featuring some of the best returns for members seen in years.

“Of particular note have been the significant growth in foreign royalty earnings for Australian and New Zealand songwriters over the course of the year,” APRA AMCOS CEO Brett Cottle AM proudly noted in his annual breakdown.

Foreign performing right revenue shot up 26 percent to $34 million since the last audit, which indicated a 24 percent increase in foreign revenue. That year’s review was, in fact, the most successful year for Australia’s international appeal.

Sounds Good Feels Good is 5 Seconds of Summer’s second full-length effort, a follow-up to their self-titled debut, which sold 259,000 copies in its first week (according to Nielsen Music), earning the band their first Number 1 album in the US.

What’s more 5 Seconds of Summer are now the only band — not vocal group — to see their first two full-length studio albums debut at Number 1 on the Billboard 200 chart. The album’s lead single, ‘She’s Kinda Hot’, also became their highest-charting track on the Pop Songs airplay chart.