02 December 2014
Newsdesk
Official Charts Company data released today by music trade body the BPI reveals that Ed Sheeran’s acclaimed album ‘x’ has now attained million-selling status in the UK – the first artist album to achieve this feat within a calendar year since Emeli Sandé’s ‘Our Version of Events’ in 2012.
The 1 million milestone now places Ed in an elite group of British artists who have achieved the landmark in the UK over the past few years, including Adele in 2011 (‘21’ and ‘19’), Take That in 2010 (‘Progress’) and Susan Boyle in 2009 (‘I Dreamed a Dream’). See Notes to Editors for full details.
‘x’ has amassed sales for the year to date in excess of 1.005 million copies across all recorded music formats (CD, vinyl and downloads), and with the peak Christmas trading period still to come, it is likely the album will be certified 4x Platinum (equivalent to 1.2m copies) by the BPI before the end of 2014.
Spending 8 straight weeks at the top of the Official Albums Chart upon its release on 20th June 2014 (and a further week at the top since then), ‘x’ (pronounced ‘multiply’) is not only the UK’s fastest-selling and longest-running No.1 artist album of the year, it is also the longest-running No.1 since Adele’s ‘21’, which topped the charts for 11 consecutive weeks back in 2011.
In its first week of release in June, all twelve songs from the standard version of ‘x’ flooded into the Official Singles Chart Top 100 after also performing exceptionally well on streaming services. Underlining a year of chart records for Ed, his single ‘Thinking Out Loud’ went on to top the Official Singles Chart after a mammoth 19 weeks in the Top 40, becoming the song with the longest climb from entering the Top 40 to the Number 1 spot in history. The much-loved track has since smashed Official Chart records for the most number of streams of a track served in one week (1.638m).
“F**kin’ buzzin’!” Ed quipped, on hearing the news from OfficialCharts.com of ‘x’ smashing 1 million sales.
