Well, it's a good week to be working for Island Records. Since its release on 22 Nov U2's new album 'How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb' has gone number one in 21 territories and has sold in excess of 6 million units, 2.5 million in the US alone. Those figures bode well for the long term success of the album, because the last U2 album 'All That You Can't Leave Behind', which went on to sell 10.5 million copies worldwide, only had advance shipments of 3.26 million.
Such is the success of the album that as well as selling more than 600,000 copies here in the UK, it has already been deemed 6 times platinum in Ireland, 3 times platinum in Canada, 2 times platinum in the US and Italy, platinum in Australia, Austria, Denmark, Germany, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland, 2 times Gold in France and Brazil, and Gold in Belgium, the Czech Republic, Finland, Greece, Holland, Hong Kong, Japan and Thailand
Jason Iley, General Manager of the Island Records Group in the UK, told CMU: "U2 are a dream to work with. As soon as we heard the new album we knew that this was the sound of a band at the top of its form."