Good news/bad news, One Direction: You topped Justin Bieber in Twitter mentions during Sunday’s American Music Awards, when the four-piece won Artist of the Year — but the “Sorry” singer scored where it really counts, on the sales charts.
Also on Sunday, Billboard released its new Top 200 chart, which featured Bieber’s “Purpose” in the No. 1 slot and One Direction’s “Made in the A.M.” as runner-up. Both pop acts dropped their new albums on Nov. 13.
With the effort, Bieber earned his sixth No. 1 album, moving a personal-best 522,000 units in one week. That big number also marked the largest sales week for any artist in a year.
One Direction’s offering sold 459,000 units, which would have been good for No. 1 almost any other week. Fans of the two acts were clearly into the pop sales battle, as both albums far surpassed their respective 300,000-or-so sales predictions.
Back to the AMAs, where the picture was rosier for the Zayn Malik-less 1D. One Direction’s win in the Favorite Pop/Rock Group category actually generated the most Twitter conversation of the entire awards show, probably thanks to its earlier time slot. The band then edged out Carrie Underwood, itself (for the Artist of the Year win), and Gwen Stefani on the social media site.
While Bieber’s show-closing performance was the No. 5 moment in conversation, he moved up to No. 2 when talking artists overall. He and 1D topped Selena Gomez, Ariana Grande and Demi Lovato by that count.
Below are the Twitter rankings from the 2015 AMAs.
Here are the moments that generated the most conversation:
- @OneDirection wins Favorite Pop/Rock Group
- @CarrieUnderwood performs “Heartbeat”
- @OneDirection wins Artist of the Year
- @GwenStefani performs “I Used to Love You”
- @JustinBieber performs to close the show
And here are the most-discussed artists from last night’s ABC telecast:
- @onedirection
- @justinbieber
- @selenagomez
- @ArianaGrande
- @ddlovato