For One Direction, it could be very personal.
In one of those incredibly ironic twists of fate that often happens in life, boy band One Direction is aiming to beat Taylor Swift's recent history-making opening sales week of 1.287 million albums when their fourth CD, cleverly titled "Four," is released on Monday (Nov. 17). And where does the irony come in? One of the band's members, Harry Styles, and the newly-minted pop songstress Swift used to be a hot item. Then he broke her heart and she wrote a big ol' hit song about the snake-in-the-grass ex-suitor.
So, Styles and his One Direction brethren - Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne and Niall Horan - may have a mutual goal to get back at Swift by outdoing her where it hurts, both in money and in career accomplishments. Here's the band's target: Swift's "1989;" the year 24-year-old Swift was born - is the first million-selling album of 2014. In its first week of sales, the album catapulted itself into being the year's second best-selling album overall, behind the "Frozen" soundtrack. And "1989" is the best-selling album in 12 years.
Topping the sales of Swift's "1989" with Monday's debut of "Four" may be an insurmountably tall order, since some music industry pros see signs that One Direction's star is fading. The industry insiders point to the fact that the band has seen merchandise and sponsorship spin-offs increasingly replace music as the core of their business.
Mark Borkowski, a public relations expert, stated in The Independent, that the quintets' physical sales might start to decline, but, he added, "It's about YouTube and digital impact for One Direction. There's still great potential for them to make money as a band and then as solo artists."
If Styles does have a grudge against Swift for her publicly taking him to task in the form of a hit song, that grudge may not be enough to power One Direction's "Four" passed "1989." Swifts album title is clearly bigger than theirs.
