One Direction soar to top of US album charts

One Direction’s Take Me Home has taken the boys to the top of the US charts.

The group’s second album has sold 540,000 units in its first week, according to Nielsen SoundScan — the year’s third-highest debut behind Taylor Swift’s Red, which sold 1.2m in its first week earlier this month, and Mumford & Sons’ Babel, which sold more than 600,000 albums in Sep in its debut week.

“We just want to say a massive thanks to all the fans who have supported us,” band member Harry Styles, 18, said. “We can send tweets and thank them, but 140 characters is never going be enough to say how much it means.”

The album also debuted at No 1 in Britain. The fivesome’s debut, Up All Night, came in at No 2 last year; it was released in March in America, where it hit No 1 and has achieved platinum status.

“We were a little bit nervous about how people were going to take it,” 19-year-old Niall Horan from Mullingar said of the new album during tour rehearsals. “Everyone gets that second album syndrome.”

One Direction, who came third in The X Factor in 2010, are managed by Simon Cowell. In just a year, the band has become a worldwide sensation, thanks to its feverish fans.

The group released a book and have a Nickelodeon show and 3D movie planned. They also made the cut for Barbara Walters’s most fascinating people of 2012 list, which includes New Jersey governor Chris Christie and US Olympic gold medallist, gymnast Gabby Douglas.

One Direction said those experiences have helped the group mature.

“We’ve been working hard. We’re starting to grow up,” Horan said. “We’re still young, but we’ve passed the initial teenage years... We’ve grown up quite quick in the job we have to do and we became a lot more independent.”

The group will launch a worldwide tour in February. They hope to work with Katy Perry and are still trying to adjust to fame. “I can see how it gets to people. I guess it’s quite easy to get wrapped up in it all,” Styles said.

“We do the same things every other lad our age does. We go out, we have fun, we meet girls and stuff like that. Sometimes it gets written about, which, yeah, we think about it and it’s absolutely crazy. It’s still a bit weird thinking that that’s the way it is.”