Liam Payne, who rose to fame as a member of One Direction, released his long-awaited debut solo album, LP1 , on December 6. Despite a lot of anticipation building up to the release, it hasn’t set the charts on fire.
As previously reported by The Inquisitr , the record consists of 17 tracks and the many singles he’s released over the years, including “Strip That Down,” “Polaroid,” “For You,” “Stack it Up,” and his most recent, “All I Want (for Christmas).” Payne collaborated with a lot of names for the album — Quavo, Zedd, Jonas Blue, Lennon Stella, J Balvin, Rita Ora, and Cheat Codes — but that hasn’t seemed to help the public support the release.
Billboard Charts tweeted that the record debuted at a disappointing No. 111 on the U.S. Billboard 200 album chart. Reportedly, it only sold a weak 9,500 copies.
While Payne has yet to speak on the chart position, it’s no secret that there is a lot of pressure for him to succeed solo, as One Direction was a worldwide phenomenon. According to Billboard , their first four studio albums topped the charts in the U.S. Their final and fifth release to date, Made in the A.M. , reached No. 2.
As The Inquisitr previously noted, Payne’s album wasn’t popular with critics either. The Guardian called it a terrible album, and Variety compared the record to Justin Timberlake’s work but not in a complimentary way.
Despite bad reviews, the “Get Low” hitmaker still thanked those who had purchased the album and insisted that he was blown away by the reaction he had received.
. @LiamPayne ‘s ‘LP1’ debuts at #111 on this week’s Billboard 200 (9.5K sold).
— chart data (@chartdata) December 16, 2019
Billboard recently ranked all of One Direction’s solo songs from worst to best. From Payne’s back catalog, “Familiar” with J Balvin was placed highest at No. 6. Harry Styles’ debut single, “Sign of the Times,” was named the best from the 43 tracks.
Louis Tomlinson is the only member from One Direction who has yet to release his debut album. To date, Zayn Malik has released two studio albums — Mind of Mine and Icarus Falls; Niall Horan has dropped one — Flicker; and Harry Styles has also released two — Harry Styles and Fine Line .
Fine Line was released last week and has proved to be an instant commercial success. The album is predicted to debut at the top of the U.S. Billboard 200 chart with 420,000 – 440,000 units sold. In a world where streams have a huge impact on the charts these days, it has been said that 315,000 – 340,000 of those sales are expected to be purely physical and digital sales.