Ed Sheeran has topped the UK albums and singles charts this week, following the release of his new album, No 6 Collaborations Project.
The album outsold the rest of the Top 30 albums put together, and is the year’s fastest-selling album so far, scoring 125,000 combined sales from 57,000 physical sales, 18,000 downloads and 70.2m track streams.
The song Beautiful People, his collaboration with Khalid, reaches No 1 in the singles chart after two weeks at No 3, making it Sheeran’s seventh No 1 single in the UK. Two other tracks from No 6 Collaborations Project are in the Top 5: Take Me Back to London, featuring Stormzy, is a new entry at No 3; and Cross Me with Chance the Rapper and PnB Rock is at No 4 in its eighth week in the Top 10. At No 2 is last week’s No 1: Señorita by Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello.
Only the three most popular songs from one artist can be in the Top 100 at any single time, which means I Don’t Care, Sheeran’s single with Justin Bieber that recently spent eight weeks at No 1, drops out entirely.
His three other albums feature in the Top 40: ÷ at 7, x at 18 and + at 37. The arrival of A Star is Born on Sky Cinema this week helps it back into the Top 5 albums, while last week’s No 1, Lewis Capaldi, drops to No 2.
Earlier this week, Sheeran became the artist with the most monthly listeners on Spotify, with 69 million people around the world streaming his tracks, almost a third of Spotify’s total 217-million user base.