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Popular Ed Sheeran spent the last ten years being popular, popularity checker confirms
By Andy Malt | Published on Wednesday 11 December 2019
The Official Charts Company has crowned Ed Sheeran the UK’s Official Number 1 Artist Of The Decade. It’s always good to have a reminder that he’s quite popular. He also becomes the latest recipient of an Official Chart Record Breaker Award.
If you’re thinking that this is just an excuse to lay down a load of stats, well, I mean obviously that’s what this is. More than a musician, Ed Sheeran is a stat creator, and in ten years he’s generated so many he has very nearly run out of numbers.
Over the course of the 2010s, no other artist as had as many top fives, top tens or top 20s as our Ed. Nor spent as long in the top 40 as a whole. The time each of his charting singles have spent in the top 40 collectively totals 572 weeks. And that stretches to 1002 weeks if you look at the top 75. Told you. Numbers.
That Official Chart Record Breaker Award is for two specific stats – for having the most number ones across the official singles and albums chart between 2010-2019 (that being twelve), and the most weeks at number one across the official singles and albums chart in the same time period (that being 79 weeks).
He joins the two previous winners of the award, Justin Bieber (the first act in history to hold all top three positions in the Official Singles Chart simultaneously) and Paul McCartney (22 number ones across his career).
“Ed truly has dominated this decade and is a worthy recipient of this amazing new award”, says OCC boss Martin Talbot. “At the start of the decade, he was a little known – albeit highly rated – young eighteen year old lad from Suffolk – but his catalogue of achievements since then are genuinely remarkable. Today, he is firmly established among the highest level of global music superstars”.
Sheeran himself comments: “Thank you to everyone who’s supported me over the past ten years, especially my amazing fans. Here’s to the next ten!”
Nice of him to do a shout out for the people who supported him who weren’t also fans. Those people are so often forgotten.
Anyway, what about everyone else? Surely other people achieved things in the last ten years? You’re damn right they did. And for those people the Official Charts Company has put together some, well, charts. Obviously. If you want, you can peruse the top 100 best selling singles of the decade here and the top 100 albums here.
But if you’d rather just know the ten-year top tens for singles and albums, you can check those out below. There’s ten in each. But not ten artists, because, well, Ed Sheeran. Oh, and Adele. Adele did alright too. Have a look here:
Official UK Singles Chart 2010 – 2019
1. Ed Sheeran – Shape Of You
2. Mark Ronson feat Bruno Mars – Uptown Funk
3. Ed Sheeran – Thinking Out Loud
4. Luis Fonsi feat Daddy Yankee and Justin Bieber – Despacito (Remix)
5. Ed Sheeran – Perfect
6. Drake feat Wizkid and Kyla – One Dance
7. Pharrell Williams – Happy
8. John Legend – All Of Me
9. Justin Bieber – Sorry
10. Clean Bandit – Rather Be
Official UK Albums Chart 2010-2019
1. Adele – 21
2. Adele – 25
3. Ed Sheeran – Multiply
4. Ed Sheeran – Divide
5. Michael Buble – Christmas
6. Sam Smith – In The Lonely Hour
7. Ed Sheeran – Plus
8. Emeli Sandé Our Version Of Events
9. Take That – Progress
10. Various Artists – The Greatest Showman OST
