Adele on course for longest-running Official Albums Chart topper in 40

Adele's '21' looks set to spend the most weeks at the top of the Official Albums Chart in over 40 years!
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Adele continues her phenomenal run at smashing Official Charts records. The Tottenham-born singer/songwriter’s album, ‘21’, is on course to return to the Number 1 spot on this Sunday’s Official Albums Chart, and would thus become the longest chart-topping album release in nearly 42 years, according to the Official Charts Company.

If ‘21’ does hit the summit this weekend, it will spend its 19th non-consecutive week at Number 1 since its release less than a year ago in January, 2011. The previous longest chart topper is Simon and Garfunkel’s 1970 classic ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’, which has amassed 33 non-consecutive weeks in the top spot since its release.

’21’ is currently the longest running Number 1 artist album for a solo artist in UK chart history, and the sixth longest running Number 1 album overall; surpassed only by Simon and Garfunkel mentioned above, and The Beatles’ records Please Please Me, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, With The Beatles and A Hard Day’s Night. (Please note this data does not include original soundtrack albums).

Adele’s 14 times platinum album ‘21’ was this week revealed by the Official Charts Company as the biggest selling album of 2011, having shifted a staggering 3.77m copies across the calendar year, outselling the Number 2 album Michael Buble’s ‘Christmas’, by nearly three copies to one.

See full Top 20 biggest selling albums of 2011 here.

If Adele can retain her midweek lead into the weekend, the 23 year old ex-Brit School student will also be just one week away from equalling both Queen and Oasis in terms of number of weeks in her career spent at Number 1 in the Official Albums Chart. Though of course Adele has managed to notch up this impressive tally across only her first two albums, whereas Queen and Oasis took nine and eight albums respectively to hit their totals of 21 weeks apiece in the top spot.

See the full Official Albums Chart Update Top 10 below:

Official Albums Chart Update Top 10
01 21 - ADELE
02 DOO-WOPS & HOOLIGANS - BRUNO MARS
03 + - ED SHEERAN
04 MYLO XYLOTO - COLDPLAY
05 LIONESS: HIDDEN TREASURES - AMY WINEHOUSE
06 IN CASE YOU DIDN'T KNOW - OLLY MURS
07 4 - BEYONCE
08 WHO YOU ARE - JESSIE J
09 HEAVEN - REBECCA FERGUSON
10 TALK THAT TALK - RIHANNA

© 2012 Official Charts Company


Adele - Rolling In The Deep on MUZU.

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