The
UK Albums Chart is a list of
albums ranked by physical and digital sales in the
United Kingdom. It is compiled by
The Official UK Charts
Company and published in
Music Week
magazine (Top 75) and on the OCC website (Top 100); the full Top
200 is published exclusively in
ChartsPlus.
To qualify for the UK albums chart the album must be the correct
length and price. It must be more than 3 tracks or 20 minutes long
and not be classed as a budget album. A budget album costs between
£0.50 and £4.24. Additionally, various artist compilations - which
until January 1989 were included in the main album listing - are
now listed separately in a compilations chart. Full details of the
rules can be found on the OCC website.
Though album sales tend to produce more revenue and, over time, act
as a greater measure of an artist's success, this chart receives
less media attention than the UK Singles Chart, due to overall
sales of an album being more important than its peak position.
Indeed, in recent years, the album chart has been in good health
despite fears that music innovations such as
MP3 players would threaten the traditional album.
2005 even saw a record number of artist album sales with 126.2
million sold in the UK.
In the 1970s the new album chart was revealed at 12.45pm on
Thursdays on
BBC Radio 1, and then moved
to 6.05 pm (later 6.30 pm) on Wednesday evenings during the
Peter Powell and
Bruno Brookes shows. In October 1987 it moved
to Monday lunchtimes, during the
Gary
Davies show, and from April to October 1993 it briefly had its
own show from 7.00-8.00 pm on Sunday evenings, introduced by
Lynn Parsons. Since October 1993 it has
been included in the
UK Top 40 show from 4.00-7.00 pm on
Sundays. A weekly 'Album Chart' show was licensed out to
BBC Radio 2 and presented by
Simon Mayo, until it ended on 2 April 2007.
Record holders
The most successful artists in the charts depends on the criteria
used. As of 2005,
Queen albums have
spent more time on the UK album charts than those of any other
musical act, followed by
The Beatles,
Elvis Presley and
U2. By most weeks at number 1, however, The Beatles lead;
by most top ten albums, it is Elvis Presley.
Madonna is the most successful female
solo recording artist in the U.K.
with 11 #1
albums and most weeks at #1 on the albums chart - 29. She is
tied with Elvis Presley at the 2nd spot for having 11 #1 albums.
The Beatles are 1st - with 15. Not counting 1950's & 1960's
Film Soundtracks, the 2 females with the most weeks at #1 in the
Album Chart, are Agnetha & Frida, who as part of ABBA have
spent 57 weeks at #1, from 9 #1 albums.
The longest running number one album, both consecutively and
non-consecutively, is the soundtrack of the film
South Pacific. It had a
consecutive run of seventy weeks from November 1958 to March 1960
(meaning it was number one for the entire year of 1959), and had
further runs at the top in 1960 and 1961, making a non-consecutive
total of one hundred and fifteen weeks.
The youngest person to top the charts is Scotland's
Neil Reid, who after winning
Opportunity Knocks topped the charts
in 1972 at the age of 12 years 9 months old. The youngest female
artist to top the chart is
Avril
Lavigne at 17 years and 3 months with
Let Go in 2003.
The album to spend the most weeks on the charts is
Fleetwood Mac's
Rumours which spent 478 weeks on the charts. In
second place is
Bat Out of
Hell by
Meat Loaf, (474 weeks)
followed by Queen's
Greatest Hits (472
weeks).
The fastest selling album is
Be
Here Now by
Oasis which sold
nearly one million copies on its first week. The fastest selling
album by a female artist is
Life for
Rent by
Dido. The fastest
selling debut album is
Spirit by
Leona Lewis, released in November 2007 and
selling almost half a million copies in its first week of release.X
factor 2007 runner up,
Ray Quinn became
the only person to top the album chart without ever releasing a
single, though
Led Zeppelin achieved
eight consecutive number one albums from 1970 to 1979 without
releasing a single in the UK until 1997.
The first artist to score five consecutive number one album chart
debuts was
Erasure, whose albums
The Innocents,
Wild!,
Chorus,
Pop! - the First 20
Hits and
I Say, I Say,
I Say all reached the top of the charts over a six year
period.
All of
Leona Lewis,
Oasis,
Coldplay and
The Killers' studio albums have
reached #1 on the UK Albums Chart.
See also
References
External links
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