Every artist to achieve the rare feat of two number one albums in a single year
The UK charts has seen a wide variety of acts reach number one, both in terms of singles and albums, and while it can sometimes be surprising that the public would push to get, say, Joe Dolce to number one in the singles chart, it makes even less sense that certain artists would be able to achieve a number one album.
To be successful in the album charts, people invariably have to want to listen to more than just one or two songs by an artist, and there’s little chance that people are going to have any desire to listen to a full album’s worth of material from an act that has reached the top of the singles chart based on novelty.
This is why reaching the top spot in the album charts feels like an even bigger achievement, given how there has to be enough excitement surrounding a full-length release for the public to want to contribute towards sales figures. Of course, some records that achieve this are compilations of an artist’s greatest hits, and in these instances, they’ve got a skewed advantage of being able to reach number one based on the fact that listeners already know that they’re fans of the songs that appear on it.
However, while reaching number one on one occasion is an impressive feat, managing to do it on multiple occasions is even more impressive, and more impressive still is being able to do this twice in the space of the same calendar year.
Only a handful artists since the dawn of the UK Albums Chart in 1956 have successfully managed to score two different number one albums in the same year (excluding re-entries at the top from previous years), and while some of these may come as something of a surprise, each of them have successfully cemented their places in music history as a result.
How many artists have had two UK number one albums in the same year?
Unsurprisingly, there haven’t been too many artists to have achieved this feat, with a grand total of only 20 to have done it in the history of the charts. Again, to nobody’s shock, some of the biggest artists have successfully managed to do this, and some have done it on multiple occasions.
The Beatles, Elton John and Taylor Swift all make it on the list on account of having done this in three separate years, while the likes of Bob Dylan, David Bowie and Led Zeppelin can all claim to have done it twice. In fact, both The Beatles and Bowie, alongside Mike Oldfield, all hold an unusual record of having knocked themselves off the top of the charts with another album, with Bowie being the most recent to have done this following his death just a few days after the release of his final album, Blackstar.
Artist deaths and greatest hits releases account for a handful of these, with the second of Bowie’s number one albums in 2016 being a compilation album, and the same going for Queen, who hit the top of the charts in 1991 with Innuendo, only for frontman Freddie Mercury to pass the same year, allowing their greatest hits compilation to reach the top of the charts.
However, while other high-profile names such as ABBA, Elvis Presley and Ed Sheeran also make the cut without raising any eyebrows, this doesn’t account for some of the more surprising inclusions. The likes of The George Mitchell Minstrels rather controversially reaching top spot twice in 1962 is one that will surely raise eyebrows, and the presumed-forgotten Britpop act Shed Seven miraculously coming out with not just a best-of release in 2024, but a new album, both of which went straight to number one, is something of a shock.
Every artist to achieve two number one albums in a single year:
- ABBA – 1979 (Voulez-Vous, Greatest Hits Vol. 2)
- The Beatles – 1963 (Please Please Me, With the Beatles), 1964 (A Hard Day’s Night, Beatles for Sale), 1965 (Help!, Rubber Soul)
- Blondie – 1979 (Parallel Lines, Eat to the Beat)
- Blue – 2002 (All Rise, One Love)
- Bob Dylan – 1965 (The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, Bringing It All Back Home), 1970 (Self Portrait, New Morning)
- David Bowie – 1973 (Aladdin Sane, Pin Ups), 2016 (Blackstar, Best of Bowie)
- Ed Sheeran – 2023 (Minus, Autumn Variations)
- Elton John – 1973 (Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only the Piano Player, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road), 1974 (Caribou, Elton John’s Greatest Hits), 1990 (Sleeping with the Past, The Very Best of Elton John)
- Elvis Presley – 1962 (Blue Hawaii, Pot Luck)
- Frank Sinatra – 1957 (This Is Sinatra!, A Swingin’ Affair)
- The George Mitchell Minstrels – 1962 (On Stage with the George Mitchell Minstrels, The Black and White Minstrel Show)
- Led Zeppelin – 1970 (Led Zeppelin II, Led Zeppelin III), 1976 (Presence, The Song Remains The Same)
- Mike Oldfield – 1974 (Hergest Ridge, Tubular Bells)
- The Monkees – 1967 (The Monkees, More of The Monkees)
- Queen – 1991 (Innuendo, Greatest Hits II)
- Rihanna – 2011 (Loud, Talk That Talk)
- Robbie Williams – 1998 (Life thru a Lens, I’ve Been Expecting You)
- Slade – 1973 (Slayed?, Sladest)
- Taylor Swift – 2020 (Folklore, Evermore), 2021 (Fearless (Taylor’s Version), Red (Taylor’s Version)), 2023 (Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), 1989 (Taylor’s Version))
- Shed Seven – 2024 (A Matter of Time, Liquid Gold)
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