Ed Sheeran and Sir Elton John have debuted at number one on the Official UK Singles Chart with their festive hit, ‘Merry Christmas’.
The 30-year-old singer and the music icon teamed up to release the Christmas song last week, and on Friday (10.12.21) the song rocketed to the top of the charts as it debuted at number one.
‘Merry Christmas’ registered an impressive 76,708 chart sales in its first week, including 22,156 pure sales from physical and digital downloads, and 7.6 million streams.
The festive track also earned the biggest week of CD single sales of the year so far, with 8,101 copies sold over the last seven days.
For Ed, the song marks his third number one single of 2021 after ‘Bad Habits’ and ‘Shivers’, and is his 12th chart-topping track of his career so far.
The song is Elton’s second number one this year following ‘Cold Heart’ with Dua Lipa and is his ninth in total.
According to Music Week, Ed Sheeran now matches Take That’s UK number one singles tally, and there are now only five acts in UK chart history that have more – Madonna with 13, Cliff Richard and Westlife with 14 each, The Beatles with 17, and Elvis Presley with 21.
And although Ed and Elton managed to top the charts with their new festive song, the track wasn’t the most-streamed song this week.
Sticking with a Christmas theme, the public were blasting Wham!’s hit single ‘Last Christmas’ from streaming services the most, with Mariah Carey’s classic ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ in second.
The two tracks finished in third and fourth in the Official Singles Chart this week, with Adele’s ‘Easy on Me’ slotting into second.
Meanwhile, in the Official Albums Chart, Adele took the top spot for the third week running with ‘30’, while Ed Sheeran’s latest record ‘=’ was second, and ABBA’s comeback album ‘Voyage’ was third.