Christmas certainly came early for Harry Styles this year with his sophomore album Fine Line. After a two year hiatus from releasing new music, Harry has shown that taking time for developing new music will always reflect in the results.
In the United States, Fine Line debuted at Number 1 on the Billboard 200 with a staggering 478,000 equivalent album units sold and 393,000 pure albums sales through digital downloads and physical releases. For context, this is double the amount his 2017 self-titled debut album sold. The mindblowing numbers have given him the 6th best-selling traditional album of the year in only one week. The incredible numbers have also pushed Harry to become the UK male soloist with the best first-week sales in Neilsen Music history. In amongst the massive traditional album sales, Harry managed to pull 100 million on-demand streams within the first week, marking the third-biggest debut streaming week for an artist this year.
Harry didn’t just achieve phenomenal success in America, Fine Line landed in straight at Number 1 in over 20 countries, including Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Mexico, Netherlands, Sweden, Brazil, and across South East Asia, and has become the first UK male soloist to get a Number 1 with his first two albums.
In his homeland of the UK Harry managed to make some serious waves with the album despite the tough Christmas time competition. On the vinyl chart, ‘Fine Line’ raced to #1 and completely outsold the top five on Vinyl altogether. In addition to this, Styles scored three Top 40 singles in the Official Singles Chart: Adore You, Watermelon Sugar, and unpromoted album track Falling.
As well as the charting success, critics have embraced the album wholeheartedly. Fine Line scores a 76/100 on Metacritic with an overwhelming number of 4/5 reviews including Rolling Stones, The Guardian, NME and The Independent. The Evening Standard even dubbed the album “the most interesting boy band escapee yet.”
During a hectic release week, Harry Styles made time to host two one-night-only shows at The Forum in Los Angeles and the Electric Ballroom in Camden, London. He also managed to fit in a quick appearance at the Radio One Live Lounge where he surprised fans with an incredible cover of Lizzo’s hit song Juice (and even got a seal of approval from her).
You can watch Harry’s amazing cover below and if you weren’t one of the lucky few who managed to snatch a ticket to his two intimate concerts, no fear as he is heading out on his worldwide Love on Tour in 2020, with ticketing information available here.
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