Island Records are celebrating today as Drake has now overtaken Rihanna’s 2007 no. 1 single ‘Umbrella’ as THE LONGEST RUNNING NUMBER 1 SINGLE IN THE DIGITAL AGE. ‘‘One Dance’ has now spent 11 consecutive weeks at number one, selling well over 1 million copies, making it the joint 5th longest running number 1 in the history of the UK singles chart.
To put this achievement in context, Rihanna held the top spot for 10 weeks in 2007, during which time she sold 355k copies. Indeed the total to date for “Umbrella”, 9 years later, is 926k. In Drake’s 11 week run, he has sold 1,082,545 copies which is more in 11 weeks than Rihanna has sold in 9 years! In addition after this week, Drake will astonishingly surpass the total single sales achieved by Wet Wet Wet during their 15 week run at the top back in 1994 (1,001,228).
In just 11 weeks the first single off the Toronto based superstar’s fourth studio album ‘VIEWS’ has become the fastest selling single in the new digital age of streaming, beating Adele’s ‘Hello’. Meanwhile Drake’s new Island album ‘VIEWS’, gave him his first number 1 album in the UK, has officially gone Gold in the UK, is fast approaching sales of 200,000 copies since its release in March, and continues to ride high in the upper reaches of the UK album charts.
These phenomenal achievements have been mirrored across the Atlantic where Drake has topped the Billboard album chart for 7 weeks and the singles chart for 6 weeks. Indeed ‘VIEWS’ sold an outstanding 1 million copies in its first week.
