Singles:
Topping the chart for the sixth time in eight weeks, We Found Love does is the hard way again for Rihanna feat. Calvin Harris, overcoming a midweek deficit to an X Factor graduate for the third week in a row.
Behind JLS' Take A Chance On Me and One Direction's Gotta Be You on early sales flashes in the previous fortnight, We Found Love lagged behind Olly Murs' Dance With Me Tonight in the most recent frame before putting on a surge. Its final tally of 79,804 sales is a 19.22% improvement week-on-week, raising its overall tally to 680,936, and earn it the distinction of being the longest-running number one since 2007, when Leona Lewis' Bleeding Love reeled off seven weeks in a row at the summit.
And it is only the tip of the iceberg for Rihanna, who also logs her 20th Top 10 single courtesy of Take Care (12-9, 29,815 sales), a track off Drake's Take Care album on which she is featured. Meanwhile, with Talk That Talk debuting atop the album chart, three of its tracks enter the Top 75, lifting Rihanna's tally of hits in that list to five. The newcomers are the title track (number 25, 12,397 sales) which also features Jay-Z; You Da One (number 39, 9,392 sales) and Where Have You Been (number 61, 5,582 sales). With 15 further Rihanna releases charting between 76 and 200, nine of them from the new album - she has 20 songs on the Top 200 - a 10% share.
Although failing to become his third number one hit, Dance With Me Tonight sold 74,475 copies to debut at number two for Olly Murs, ahead of the release today (28th) of parent album In Case You Didn't Know, which also houses Skips A Beat, his collaboration with Rizzle Kicks that topped the chart 13 weeks ago.
There's more X Factor related chart debuts in the form of judge/mentor Kelly Rowland's Down For Whatever (number six, 42,413 sales, feat. Wavs); and 2010 runner-up Rebecca Ferguson's first single Nothing's Real But Love (number 10, 29,263 sales), while girl group Little Mix's cover of En Vogue's 1997 hit Don't Let Go (Love) brings the original back onto the chart at number 23 (13,579 sales).
After debuting at number two last week, Flo Rida's Good Feeling falls back to number three (53,730 sales) and is joined in the top tier by Avicii's Levels (number four, 48,342 sales), which it samples. Both tracks, in turn, utilize the introductory vocal phrase from Etta James’ 1962 recording Something’s Got A Hold On Me.
Moves Like Jagger slips 7-8 for Maroon 5 feat. Christina Aguilera but its sales are up 2.40% week-on-week at 32,096. A certain million seller before the end of the year, the track has been in the Top 10 throughout its 15 week chart tenure, selling 904,445 copies.
20 years to the week after it made its chart debut, Fairytale Of New York is a Christmas evergreen. The Pogues/Kirsty MacColl collaboration makes it into the Top 75 for the seventh December in a row, jumping 112-47 (7,034 sales). Mariah Carey's 1994 classic All I Want For Christmas Is You isn't far behind, jumping 100-64 (5,200 sales) to chart for the fifth year in a row, although it faces competition this year from versions by Michael Buble, Glee Cast and Justin Bieber, the last of which features Carey herself as a duettist.
Overall singles sales are up 2.44% week-on-week at 3,188,139 - 5.37% above same week 2010 sales of 3,025,758.
1 Rihanna/Calvin Harris 79804 (680,936)
2 Olly Murs 74475
3 Flo Rida 53750
4 Avicii 48342
6 Kelly Rowland/The WAV.s 42413
8 Maroon 5/Christina 32096 (904,445)
9 Drake/Rihanna 29815
10 Rebecca Ferguson 29263
23 En Vogue 13579
25 Rihanna/Jay Z [TTT] 12397
39 Rihanna [YDO] 9392
47 Pogues/Kirsty MacColl 7034
61 Rihanna [WHYB] 5582
64 Mariah Carey 5200
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Albums:
Rihanna becomes the first artist from the Caribbean to have three number one albums since Boney M completed their hat trick in 1980, debuting atop the chart with Talk That Talk, which dashes to first week sales of 163,819. It's the sixth album by the 23 year old Barbadian - who previously topped the chart with 2007's Good Girl Gone Bad and 2010's Loud - and lifts her cumulative sales to more than 5m.
Opening with the fourth highest first week sale of any artist album thus far in 2010 - Lady GaGa's Born This Way, Coldplay's Mylo Xyloto and Adele's 21 all had bigger debuts - it comfortably eclipses her previous best first week, the 91,916 copies that Loud sold when entering at number two a year ago last week. With Talk That Talk's first single We Found Love (feat. Calvin Harris) remaining at number one, Rihanna is simultaneously atop both charts for the third time in total, and the second time this year: Umbrella (feat Jay-Z) was number one single when Good Girl Gone Bad debuted at the summit in 2007, and Drake collaboration What's My Name reached number one on the singles chart in the first week of 2011, when Loud was on the second of its three weeks at the summit.
The last act to top the singles and albums charts simultaneously twice in a calendar year with difference singles and albums was T.Rex, who did so in 1972, topping in February with Telegram Sam (single) and Electric Warrior (album) and again in May courtesy of Metal Guru (single) and Bolan Boogie (album) - though Gary Numan did it both solo and as Tubeway Army's main man in 1979. The Beatles, inevitably, hold the record for topping the chart simultaneously in 1964 with I Want To Hold Your Hand (single) and With The Beatles (album) in January, Can't Buy Me Love (single) and With The Beatles (album) in April, A Hard Days Night (single AND album) in July, and finished with a flourish, with I Feel Fine topping the singles chart while A Hard Days Night was on its last week at the album summit, and staying there for the last two weeks of the year while Beatles For Sale topped the album listing.
Rihanna's fast start put paid to One Direction's attempts to debut at number one with their debut album, Up All Night. The X Factor graduates - who topped the chart with debut single What Makes You Beautiful in September and reached number three with follow-up Gotta Be You last week - can take solace from the fact that Up All Night's sales last week of 138,631 were the highest for a number two album thus far this year, and also the highest first week sale by any X Factor act any week this year, beating the opening tallies of Mary Byrne's Mine & Yours, Jedward's Victory, Matt Cardle's Letters, Cher Lloyd's Sticks + Stones and JLS' Jukebox.
As the freshest new boy band on the block (average age 18) it is only fitting that One Direction's album also sold more copies last week than one of the genre's most durable groups, Westlife (average age 33) whose new Greatest Hits set draws a line under their career, and debuts at number four (96,475 sales). Arriving 12 years after Westlife's self-titled debut, Greatest Hits lifts the band's UK career album sales to more than 12m. Of Westlife's 10 studio albums, six reached number one, two reached number two and the others got to number three. But their previous compilation, Unbreakable: The Greatest Hits Volume 1 is their top title, with sales of 1,827,903 since its release exactly nine years ago. It is one of six albums by the band to sell more than a million in the UK (a seventh, 2007's Back Home, is just 7,270 sales away from the landmark) and is comfortably clear of their top regular album, 2000's Coast To Coast, which has sold 1,685,971 copies. Their last studio album, Gravity, is also their least successful, attracting sales of 358,943 copies since its release a year ago.
Last week's number one, Michael Buble's Christmas, dips to number three to accommodate the newcomers, but has its biggest week yet in terms of sales, improving 34.60% week-on-week to 115,445.
With as much as 12 years between releases, Kate Bush is a notoriously slow worker but her second album of the year, 50 Words For Snow, debuts at number five (49,812 sales) just 27 weeks after Director's Cut - featuring new versions of tracks from previous efforts The Sensual World and The Red Shoes - debuted and peaked at number two, on sales of 34,755. Comprising seven lengthy, experimental tracks on a wintery theme, it extends the 53 year old's unbroken string of Top 10 albums to 11 (including a hits set) since her 1978 debut.
Also new to the Top 40: Canadian rockers Nickelback's sixth studio album, Here And Now, debuts at number 10 (34,754 sales), becoming their fifth straight Top 10 entry; On Your Radar (number 23, 18,044 sales), a bit of a blip for The Saturdays ending their introductory run of three Top 10 albums, following the under-powered number 15 peak of new single My Heart Takes Over; and Soul 2 (number 24, 17,687 sales), Seal's second selection of R&B covers following - logically enough - 2008's Soul, which got to number 12.
Elsewhere there are major second week declines for JLS's Jukebox (2-6, 48,365 sales), Snow Patrol's Fallen Empires (3-11, 34,107 sales) and Drake's Take Care (5-20, 20,314 sales)
Adele's 21 dips 8-9, to equal the lowest position of its 44 week chart career, although its sales are up for the fifth week in a row at 41,430 - its best tally for 11 weeks.
Meanwhile, Now That's What I Call Music! 80 outsells all artist albums and debuts atop the compilation chart, with first week sales of 295,823. While that represents the highest weekly sale thus far this year for any album, it is 11.37% below the 333,772 copies its 2010 equivalent Now! 77 sold on its first week. Now! 80 outsold the number two compilation (Pop Party 9) by a margin of more than seven to one last week. It sold more copies that the rest of the Top 100 compilations added together, and commanded a 38.66% of overall compilation sales of 765,209.
With the Christmas shopping season apparently beginning in earnest, overall album sales are up nearly a million (40.39%) week-on-week to a 2011 best of 3,427,302 - but that's 8.27% below same week 2010 sales of 3,736,406.
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1 Rihanna 163819
2 One Direction 138631
3 Michael Buble 115445
4 Westlife 95475
5 Kate Bush 49812
6 JLS 48365
9 Adele 41430
10 Nickelback 34754
11 Snow Patrol 34107
20 Drake 20314
23 Saturdays 18044
24 Seal 17687
To Date Albums
Westlife - Unbreakable 1,827,903
Westlife - Coast To Coast 1,685,971
Westlife - Back Home 992,730
Westlife - Gravity 358,943
Compilations:
1. Now! 80
296,000+