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Blighty Beat
WHO’S LEADING THE 2015 CHART RACES IN BLIGHTY?
10/2/15

As Q4 arrives, the time is ripe to reveal which U.K. releases are currently racing toward the most coveted crown of them all.

Come Christmastime, Adele’s long-awaited third album will be flying off the shelves (or whatever the digital equivalent is) with a 11/20 release date penciled in, but can it top the sales in just six short weeks of the biggest release of this year? Of course it can. But in the meantime, last year’s chart toppers Ed Sheeran and Sam Smith and newcomer James Bay are amongst the frontrunners.

According to the U.K.’s Official Charts Company, Republic’s Bay currently claims the biggest artist album released in Blighty in 2015 so far, with his debut #1 set Chaos and the Calm racking up combined sales of nearly 345k. Asylum’s Sheeran has sold the most albums in the U.K. so far this year with his 2014 set x, which claimed the title of last year’s best-seller, and has sold 705k in 2015 alone (2.39m in total).

Capitol’s Smith is at #2 with breakout In the Lonely Hour on the Official Top 40 Biggest Artist Albums of the Year So Far, with a tally of 695k.

Big Machine’s Taylor Swift marks the first international entry into the chart at #3 with 1989, while homegrown Sony artist George Ezra’s Wanted on Voyage is the fourth biggest artist album of 2015 to date, released in October last year. Bay rounds off the total top five.

On the singles front, club hit “Cheerleader” by Ultra’s OMI could beat Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars Sony collab “Uptown Funk!” to biggest track of 2015. The Ronson/Mars track has so far had a combined sales figure of 1.63m since January (2.12m since its release on 11/10/14). “Cheerleader” currently sits at 1.37m since its release in April, with plenty of time to catch up.

Taking third place on the year’s biggest tracks so far is Island, with Hozier’s “Take Me to Church”, while the 50 Shades Of Grey anthem “Love Me Like You Do” by Polydor’s Ellie Goulding lands in fourth place—the song logged four weeks at #1 (holding Hozier off the top spot for three of them) back in February this year.

Presently sitting at #5 is Wiz Khalifa f/Charlie Puth’s “See You Again”. The Fast & Furious 7 tribute to actor Paul Walker has racked up combined chart sales of 1.07m since its April release, spending two weeks atop the Official Singles Chart before being knocked off by OMI.