Harry Styles really did own the keys to 2022. The British pop singer’s third studio album Harry’s House was the biggest LP of the year in the U.K., according to new data published by the Official Charts Company.
The ex-One Direction singer leads the year-end albums survey with Harry’s House, which shifted north of 460,000 U.K. chart units over the year, including 160,000 sales (150,000 physical and 10,000 downloads), the OCC reports.
Harry’s House logged six non-consecutive weeks atop the Official U.K. Albums Chart in 2022, more than any other album, and the lead single from it, “As It Was,” tops the U.K.’s year-end singles survey.
Compatriot Ed Sheeran comes in at No. 2 on the year-end albums list with = (Equals), which snaffled upwards of 433,000 U.K. chart units during the calendar year. Sheeran has made a career habit of racking up big numbers. In November, the OCC announced all four of his solo studio albums — (Plus), x (Multiply), ÷ (Divide) and = (Equals) — had spent a total of at least a year inside the Official Albums Chart top 10.
Completing the 2022 podium is Taylor Swift’s Midnights, which, in less than three months, captured more than 417,000 U.K. chart sales, including 217,000 sales (206,000 physical copies and11,000 downloads). Midnights got away to a particularly explosive start. First-week U.K. chart sales exceeded 204,000, more than double her previous best, 2014’s 1989 (90,300 chart units).
It’s hard to keep a good thing down. That’s certainly the case with ABBA and Queen’s barnstorming career retrospective albums. ABBA Gold became the first album in U.K. chart history to log 1,000 weeks on the chart, a feat it achieved in July 2021. It’s still going strong. Powered by the ABBA Voyage virtual residency in London, the LP appears at No. 10 on the year-end U.K. chart. Indeed, Gold improves 20-13 on the latest Official U.K. Albums Chart, doing so in its 1,078 week.
Queen’s 1981 release Greatest Hits reached the 1,000-week milestone on the U.K. chart in 2022, and it finished the year in 11th place on the year-end tally. Greatest Hits is the best-selling album in U.K. recorded music history, shifting more than seven million combined units.
Music streaming reached new heights in 2022, the BPI reports. Across digital and physical formats, the equivalent of 166 million albums were streamed or purchased during the year, up 4.3% on 2021.
Official Top 40 biggest albums of 2022
- Harry’s House, Harry Styles
- =, Ed Sheeran
- Midnights, Taylor Swift
- The Highlights, The Weeknd
- Sour, Olivia Rodrigo
- Curtain Call – The Hits, Eminem
- Diamonds, Elton John
- 50 Years – Don’t Stop, Fleetwood Mac
- Between Us, Little Mix
- Gold – Greatest Hits, ABBA
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