U.K. CHARTS: OLIVIA SMASHES RECORDS
There’s no doubt Olivia Rodrigo is the biggest breakthrough artist of 2021, and the U.K. charts are brimming with data to back up that claim. It starts with her scoring #1s on the Official Albums and Official Singles charts this week.
Rodrigo’s debut, Sour (Geffen), earns the biggest opening week for an album this year, surpassing Foo Fighters’ Medicine at Midnight (Roswell/RCA) on 51K chart sales. It’s also the biggest opening week for a debut album in two years, the best stanza since Lewis Capaldi’s Divinely Uninspired to a Hellish Extent in May 2019.
Speaking of Capaldi, Sour overtakes Divinely Uninspired in racking up the most first-week streams for a debut album: 45.7m track streams.
At 18 years and 3 months old, Rodrigo becomes the youngest solo artist in U.K. chart history to achieve the Official Chart Double. She is the first artist in six years to claim the Official Chart Double with a debut album; the last was Sam Smith with The Lonely Hour and “Lay Me Down” in 2015.
“Good 4 u,” her second #1 single, is the biggest #1 single of 2021, notching up 117K chart sales across seven days, including 13.5m streams. Two other songs from Sour are in the Top 10: “déjà vu” is up seven places to a new peak of #4; and “traitor” is new at #8.
Believe it or not, there were other albums released last week. Gary Numan’s 22nd solo studio album Intruder (BMG) is new at #2 and twenty one pilots’ Scaled and Icy (Fueled By Ramen/Atlantic) debuts at #3.
P!nk’s mostly live album All I Know So Far (RCA) opens at #4 and My Bloody Valentine scores their first-ever U.K. Top 10 with the reissue of Loveless (Domino) at #7. It’s also week’s best-selling album on vinyl.
At #10, Super Furry Animals frontman Gruff Rhys gains his first U.K. Top 10 album with his seventh full-length Seeking New Gods (Rough Trade).
At singles, BTS comes in behind Rodrigo with the highest new entry of the week, “Butter” (Big Hit) at #3. It was the week’s most downloaded single.
“Heartbreak Anthem” (Atlantic) becomes Little Mix’s 17th Top 10 single as the Galantis/David Guetta collaboration debuts at #9. Eurovision winners Måneskin, cleared of accusations of drug use at the show, hit the Official Chart for the first time with “Zitti E Buoni,” landing at #17. We’re pretty sure we ordered that at Cecconi’s a few weeks ago.
