Amy’s Lioness: Queen Of The Official Albums Chart

Amy Winehouse flies to the top of this week’s Official Albums Chart and lands the biggest weekly sales tally of her career with ‘Lioness: Hidden Treasures’ selling over 194,000 copies. 

This also gives the singer one of the biggest first week album sales of the year behind only Lady Gaga’s ‘Born This Way’ (215,000), Coldplay’s ‘Mylo Xyloto’(208,343) and Adele’s ‘21’ (208,090).

The 12 song collection, put together after the singer’s tragic death in July this year, features previously unreleased tracks, alternative versions of existing classics and new compositions. The album was compiled by her long-time musical partners, producers Salaam Remi and Mark Ronson, in close association with Amy’s family, management and record label, Island Records.  It includes Amy’s final studio recording, Body & Soul, a duet with Tony Bennett which was made in March 2011 at Abbey Road. A donation of £1 from the sale of each album in the UK will be donated to the Amy Winehouse Foundation, which was launched on what would have been Amy’s 28th birthday, September 14th 2011.

In a moving tribute to her daughter, Amy’s mother Janis Winehouse said:

“It’s such amazing news that Amy’s album has gone to Number 1, and just goes to show what she still means to people. It’s especially good for the foundation and knowing that every sale will go to help a deserving cause makes the news all the more special. I’m so proud of my daughter and so happy that she is still touching people. She’s forever in my heart”

Official Charts Company managing director Martin Talbot added:

"For Amy's posthumous album to soar to the top of the Official Albums Chart in what is such a competitive time of year is an impressive achievement and a fitting tribute. It shows just what she meant to British music fans. "

‘Lioness: Hidden Treasures’ follows the multi-platinum ‘Back to Black’ (2006), one of the biggest selling albums of the 21st century, which claimed the Number 1 spot in January 2007 and returned to the summit in this year after the singer’s untimely passing and her debut album ‘Frank’ (2003) which peaked at Number 3 this year.

‘Lioness...’ leads a huge pre-Christmas surge in sales for the week’s most popular albums with The Official Albums Chart Top 4 all recording sales of over 100,000.

Michael Buble’s ‘Christmas’, holds at Number 2 but sees its sales increase week-on-week by over 30% to almost 190,000 copies this week. Rebecca Ferguson’s ‘Heaven’, the only other new entry in this week’s Official Albums Chart Top 10, is straight in at Number 3 with over 128,000 sales, a figure which in almost any other week of the year would have assured the runner-up in last year’s X Factor the Number 1 spot.  Check out a video interview with Rebecca talking about her album below. Meanwhile, last week’s Number 1, Olly Murs’ ‘In Case You Didn’t Know’ slips to this week’s Number 4, but still notches up over 113,000 sales.

The rest of the Official Albums Chart Top 10 is made up of no less than five former Number 1s -  Rihanna’s ‘Talk That Talk’ (Number 5 this week), Adele’s ‘21’ (Number 6 this week), Ed Sheeran’s ‘+’ (Number 7), Coldplay’s ‘Mylo Xyloto’ ( Number 8) and Bruno Mars’ ‘Doo Wops & Hooligans’ (Number 10) – and one former Number 2, One Direction’s ‘Up All Night’ (Number 9 this week).

To see the Official Albums Chart in full, click here.

Official Charts - Rebecca Ferguson video interview on MUZU.