McCartney is UK’s most successful album act of all time
Sir Paul McCartney is the most successful album act of all time in the UK. He’s notched up a staggering 22 #1 albums since the early 1960s. Across a 50+ year career, he has spent an equally staggering 191 weeks on top of the album charts.
These figures come courtesy of the Official Charts Company (OCC): to mark the 60th anniversary of the UK’s Official Albums Chart being published, it presented McCartney with the Official Chart Record Breaker Award.
The OCC pointed out, “Since his debut Number 1 as a member The Beatles in May 1963 with Please Please Me (the longest-running Number 1 debut album in chart history at 30 weeks), Paul has taken hold of the Official Albums Chart like no other individual, charting in the Top 5 at least once a decade in the last six decades.”
McCartney reacting to the news: “Okay, you know how it really feels? It feels unbelievable, because when you write your songs you don’t count how well they’re doing. I remember when Please, Please Me went to Number 1, that was our first Number 1 record, and it’s a beautiful feeling to suddenly get this [award], I mean it’s amazing.
“So thank you to the people for giving it to me, I love you. And thank you to everyone who made it possible by buying the records, we love you too!”
The chart records don’t stop there; Fab Macca also played a hand in the biggest selling studio album of all time in the UK with The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, a record which has to date sold 5.1 million copies in Britain alone (and 30 million worldwide).
McCartney has sold 700 million albums globally. He is only the second recipient of the new chart award, launched in February 2016. The inaugural winner was Justin Bieber, who was the first act in history to hold positions Number 1, 2 and 3 simultaneously on the Official Singles Chart.
Sir Paul has scored 15 Number 1s as a member of The Beatles, two with Wings, four via his solo projects and one with Linda McCartney.
The 15 Beatles albums were Please Please Me (1963), With The Beatles (1963), A Hard Day’s Night (1964), Beatles For Sale (1964), Help (1965), Rubber Soul (1965), Revolver (1966), Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), The Beatles aka The White Album (1968), Abbey Road (1969), Let It Be (1970), The Beatles Live At The Hollywood Bowl (1977), Live At The BBC (1994), Anthology 2 (1996) and 1 (2000).
Ram (1971) was credited to Paul and Linda McCartney.
The two with Wings were Band On The Run (1974) and Venus And Mars (1975).
The McCartney solo albums lined up as McCartney II (1980), Tug Of War (1982), Give My Regards To Broad Street (1984) and Flowers In The Dirt (1989).
While McCartney has been the most successful member of The Beatles, John Lennon had 18 UK chart toppers (15 with The Beatles and three solo), George Harrison with 17 (15 with The Beatles and 2 solo) and Ringo Starr (15 with The Beatles).
Robin Williams had 15, four with Take That and 11 solo. Of the others Elvis Presley had 12, Madonna had 12 (including the Evita soundtrack), Phil Collins 12 (six with Genesis, 6 solo) and David Bowie (11).
What’s also astounding about McCartney’s career is that he’s still on top of the game commercially. His new career retrospective Pure McCartney (which includes his most recent track FourFiveSeconds with Kanye West and Rihanna) entered the charts at #3.
His One On One world tour, which began in April, has already visited eleven countries, and tipped to hi Australia in 2017. The tour’s nine shows in North America drew 122,385 fans and grossed US$19.2 million, putting it at 20th most successful tour in North America in the first six months of the year, according to Pollstar.
Last week it was announced that The Beatles: Live At The Hollywood Bowl album is to be released worldwide on CD and for digital download and streaming on September 9, followed by a 180-gram gatefold vinyl LP on November 18.
The album was recorded at their three sold-out shows in 1964 and 1965. Their late producer George Martin explained in his album notes for the original 1977 release: “The chaos, I might almost say panic, that reigned at these concerts was unbelievable unless you were there. Only three track recording was possible; The Beatles had no ‘fold back’ speakers, so they could not hear what they were singing, and the eternal shriek from 17,000 healthy, young lungs made even a jet plane inaudible.”
The 2016 version has four extra previously unreleased tracks, an essay by US journalist David Fricke, and its cover art features a photo taken on August 22, 1964 by The Beatles’ then-U.S. tour manager, Bob Bonis, as John, Paul, George and Ringo boarded a chartered flight from Seattle Tacoma Airport to Vancouver, BC for their first concert in Canada.
The Beatles: Live At The Hollywood Bowl is being released in conjunction with The Beatles: Eight Days A Week – The Touring Years, a documentary feature film about the band’s early career by Oscar winner Ron Howard.
Following a world premiere event in London on September 15, the film will roll out theatrically worldwide with release dates set in the U.K., France and Germany (September 15); and the U.S., Australia and New Zealand (September 16).
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