The 25-year-old musician said that he was “apprehensive” to post about the situation for fear of losing “partnership with media outlets” but decided he had to speak out after fans made such an impressive push to get their sales recounted.
“I just want to say I appreciate you contesting and fighting for our number one record in the US. We’re left with the number two spot this week and, may I add, that I think it is absolutely astonishing and incredible that we are even at the top of those charts in the caliber of artists that are there with us,” Ashton said in a video on his Twitter.
He added, “Records were released a week early that we had no control over, which is very disappointing and quite honestly, my heart broke when I found out about that…We lost 10,000 records, it was actually more. We managed to retrieve some that were released early. It was in the 10s of thousands to begin with…Other artists have had records released early before and the charts have been amended. It seems like that’s not going to happen for us…Whether the chart position changes, I am so appreciative for everything you’ve done for us over the past few weeks.”
Listen to all that Ashton had to say here…
I’m apprehensive to share this video, I think I’ve censored myself fairly well, I feel fearful to speak up about the albums that went out early for fear or loosing partnership with media outlets… but here’s some thought’s… pic.twitter.com/yWHfpZtIT9
Since the albums were given to the public early, they would not be counted towards the band’s first week sales due to Billboard‘s longstanding policy to reflect album sale activity in the tracking week that the paying customer receives the album.
“We still wanna make our album chart next week as big as possible and want to thank you all so much, to everyone that is streaming or has bought the album,” the band wrote on their Instagram.
Unfortunately, the 10,000 albums separated the band from the top spot, leading the album to chart at number two. While they didn’t top the charts in the US, they did go number one in both the United Kingdom and Australia.
Since then, fans have been asking Billboard to reconsider. The outlet has not yet repelled their decision.
Even if the guys didn’t get the number one spot in the US, we’re still super proud of their sucess!
The 12-track project includes their previously released songs “Wildflower,” “Easier,” “Teeth,” “No Shame,” and “Old Me.”
“The album title came from the first letters of all of our names,” Luke told the New York Post. “And it’s also a nod to our fans that coined us that name in our early days. They’ve been using that acronym for a long time. It kind of just sums up [that] we’re a little bit older and a little bit wiser . . . But it was named before this went down, obviously.”
“We were gonna go all over the world, do all these kinds of things, and then we just couldn’t,” he added. “But honestly, we wanted the album out really badly. We were waiting a long time for it to come out.”
Luke has also called the album “a journey through a young man’s life, for better or for worse.” Calum adds, “These new songs feel like something we could keep playing for the next 10 years, or even beyond that. It feels like our first album—like we finally found what we’d been trying to achieve since the beginning of this band.”
Listen to 5 Seconds of Summer‘s CALM below! You can also download it on Apple Music.
“As wildflower is slowing being released all over the world, man…. all we can say is this song is a Frankenstein of everything we love about music, we really hope you dig this one Cherry blossom,” they tweeted about the song.
“We wanted to make the chorus kind of a choose-your-own-adventure, where some words are left out and then accentuated by these big stabs of synth,” Calum added. “It lets everyone come up with their own interpretation, and fill in whatever they think those missing lyrics might be.”
Listen to “Wildflower” below and be sure to check back when C A L M is released on Friday (March 27)!
