Sales of just 13,000 were enough to take Emeli Sande‘s debut record ‘Our Version Of Events‘ to the top of the UK Album Chart yesterday (May 27th), according to weekly figures published by Music Week.
The paltry sum of 13,430 copies is the lowest total for a UK number one album for 18 years, when Ace Of Base reached the summit in July 1994 thanks to sales of 12,042. The Enemy, who had earlier urged fans to rush out and buy extra copies of their new album ‘Streets In The Sky‘ in the hope of pushing it to the summit, in the end scored a total of 9,854 sales – just enough for a place inside the top 10.
Recent weeks have seen a continuing trend for declining sales totals in Britain; last week, Keane‘s figure of 19,982, which kept their album ‘Strangeland‘ on top of the Album Chart, was reported to be the lowest for 12 years and only the second time in the 21st century so far when a total under 20,000 has proved to be enough for a number one, with the previous time coming only 4 weeks earlier when Adele‘s ‘21‘ hit number one with sales of a little over 17,000.