Shawn Mendes’ ‘Handwritten’ Debuts at No. 1 on Billboard 200 Chart April 22, 2015
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Shawn Mendes photographed on March 27, 2015 at the Hollywood & Vine Lofts in Hollywood.

Sixteen-year old Shawn Mendes has grown from Vine stardom to topping the Billboard 200 chart, as his debut full-length album Handwritten arrives at No. 1. The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week based on multi-metric consumption, which includes traditional album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Traditional album sales comprised the bulk of Mendes’ album launch with 106,000 copies sold. It also bows at No. 1 on the Top Album Sales chart.

Mendes is the youngest artist to have a No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart in nearly five years. The last younger artist with a No. 1 was Justin Bieber on the May 29, 2010-dated chart, when his My World 2.0 was in its fourth and final week at the top. (Bieber was 16 years and 2 months old at the time — younger than Mendes, who is 16 years and 8 months old.)

Mendes tops the Billboard 200 following the top five success of his self-titled EP, which debuted and peaked at No. 5 last year. It sold 48,000 copies in its first week and has sold 101,000 to date.

Mendes also notably opens at No. 1 without the support of an airplay hit – none of his songs have reached Billboard’s airplay charts. However, the born-from-the-Web act has unsurprisingly made a splash on the Billboard + Twitter Top Tracks chart. On that tally, which measures the week’s most shared songs on Twitter, Mendes has logged three top 20 hits, with “Life of the Party” reaching No. 1. He’s also climbed as high as No. 15 on the Social 50 chart, which tracks the most active artists on social networking sites (like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram).

Although Mendes hasn’t dented an airplay survey yet, that doesn’t mean radio stations have entirely ignored his songs. His single “Something Big” was played on six mainstream top 40 stations in the most recent tracking week (for a total of 81 plays). Its music video has done steady business on YouTube, garnering nearly 14 million global views since its release five months ago.

Mendes’ Handwritten is the second No. 1 album for Island Records in 2015, following Fall Out Boy’s American Beauty/American Psycho (released on DCD2/Island). [Billboard]