What are the three fastest-selling singles in UK chart history?
Despite the fact that we all laud music and art more generally, as a wonderfully subjective industry, devoid of any definitive metrics, it seems to be inherently dictated by a leaderboard.
Whether we like it or not, the charts have been the barometer of success in modern culture and quite often, the lifeblood of any given artist. Take The Beatles, for example, widely regarded as the greatest, most influential band of all time, whose status in the history books is buoyed by their relentless chart domination. Countless number-one singles and albums cemented their legacy with numerical data and set a benchmark for musicians thereafter.
In that decade alone, they sold 376 million records, which was nearly quarter of a million more than Elvis Presley, who came in at second place with 131m. Flicking further down the leaderboard reads like a who’s who of A-listers, with The Rolling Stones coming third with 110m, Simon and Garfunkel garnering 89m, and the famously anti-commercial Bob Dylan still coming in at fifth with 72m.
The fact that The Beatles and all of these trailing greats could conquer both the artistic and commercial worlds meant that musicians should still pay heed to the artists’ leaderboards, doing away with any idea that success is purely in the eye of the beholder. Becoming great about just as about cultural legacy as it was also about cold, hard statistics.
While the record of most records sold may never be toppled, and The Beatles’ reign of superiority will run out for the remainder of history, there are smaller wins musicians can attain. Like, the fastest-selling single in UK chart history, which doesn’t in fact belong to the Fab Four.
The three fastest-selling singles in UK chart history
One thing that the stats prove is that time is certainly on the side of historic icons. Streaming has outrightly changed the landscape of music listening, ultimately removing the physical record sale as a means of accurately recording a song’s popularity. It is largely why The Beatles’ record will never be topped and why the story of the three fastest-selling singles in UK chart history is one of slow decline.
Coming in at number one is Elton John’s 1997 hit ‘Candle in the Wind’. Selling 1.5m copies in its first week, it is the quickest-selling single of all time, beating ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’ by Band Aid, which sold 1m copies in its first week.
Elton’s single acted as one last siren call for the physical copy, beating a single from the decade previous but representing the final success story in the physical age. The statistics after his hit prove that singles sold a drastically lower quantity in their first week, never really threatening the million mark. In third was ‘Wake Me Up’ by Avicii, released 16 years after Elton John’s hit, and only managing to hit 267,000 copies sold in its first week.
It’s likely we will ever see that top three challenged, as music continues to hurtle towards digitalisation and streaming becomes the primary metric.
