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Artist News
BRITs fever helps Adele score four top five placements
By CMU Editorial | Published on Monday 21 February 2011
Adele’s new single ‘Someone Like You’ has topped the singles chart, helped in part by her live version of it at the BRIT Awards last Tuesday, which was then also put up for sale on iTunes. On the Apple store the two versions are listed separately, with the live version at number one someway ahead of the original single version at seven. But the main charts lumped sales of both versions together, presumably giving her an assured lead over all the other single releases this week.
Post-BRITS Adele fever has helped keep her album, ‘21’, at the top of the albums chart, while also sending her debut album ‘19’ back up to number four and her last single ‘Rolling In The Deep’ to the same position in the singles chart. Pointless chart trivia fans may be interested to know this is the first time a living artist has had two releases in both the top five album and singles charts in the same week since The Beatles in 1964. The use of the word “living” in that fact (supplied to us by the Official Charts Company) makes me think Elvis may also have achieved something similar posthumously.
In related news, the OCC has confirmed that downloads of all of the various BRITS performance have together sold 90,000 units since last Tuesday night, meanwhile the BRIT Awards 2011 collection topped the compilations chart this week. So you see, everyone may have been watching gypsies on Channel 4 on Tuesday night itself, but there was a little bit of BRIT fever during the rest of the week.
Chart Company supremo Martin Talbot told CMU: “It is a fantastic week for both Adele and the BRITs. For Adele to match a record of the Beatles is an extraordinary, historic achievement. The BRITs has truly impacted on the music market this year, across the seven live performance downloads and in the album sales of both performers and winners”.
The boss of BRITS organisers the BPI, meanwhile, that being Geoff Taylor, added: “This year’s BRITs showed that Britain continues to shine brightly with new musical talent. Adele’s breathtaking performance has deservedly taken her to number one, and all the winners and performers have seen a boost in sales. This is good news for the business, but also for good causes, as all proceeds from the BRITs performances go to charity for the first month”.
