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Ariana Grande scores a record-breaking week with Thank U, Next on the Official Chart

The singer tops the Official UK Singles and Albums Chart - and the numbers are huge.
ariana-grande-2019.jpg

Ariana Grande dominates this week’s Official Singles and Albums Charts as her new album Thank U, Next debuts at Number 1 with huge streaming numbers.

Ariana’s latest album becomes her third to debut at the top of the chart, following Dangerous Woman (2016) and Sweetener (2018). Thank U, Next is the star’s biggest opening week for an album to date at 65,000 combined sales, including 59 million streams across its 12 tracks.

The album sets a new record for most album streams ever by a female artist in a week, breaking her own record set by Sweetener last August. Thank U, Next is the third most streamed album in its first week overall, behind Ed Sheeran’s Divide and Drake’s Scorpion. 

On the Official Singles Chart, Ariana lands her fifth Number 1 with Break Up With Your Girlfriend, I’m Bored (85,000 combined sales), knocking her previous single 7 Rings down to Number 2. It makes her the first female artist in UK chart history to replace herself at the top of the chart. Madonna is the only other female artist who has held Number 1 and 2 simultaneously on the chart, with Into The Groove (1) and Holiday (2) in August 1985.

Break Up… is Ariana’s third Number 1 in four months, meaning she joins an elite group of artists who have racked up three chart-topping singles in under 100 days – only Elvis Presley, John Lennon and Justin Bieber have previously managed it.

Another track from the album, Needy, also debuts in this week’s Top 10 at Number 8. It makes Ariana the first female artist since Ruby Murray in March 1955 to have three Top 10 singles as a lead artist in the same week. Check out Ariana's Top 10 biggest singles in the UK.

Official Albums Chart

Elsewhere on this week’s Official Albums Chart, London rapper AJ Tracey debuts at Number 3 with his self-titled album, last week’s Number 1 Encore by The Specials drops to Number 5, and British country-pop duo Ward Thomas land at Number 8 with their third album Restless Minds.

With the UK getting loved up for Valentine’s Day this week, Michael Buble’s Love returns to the Top 40 at 25, while Bobbie Gentry’s Delta Sweete Revisited by Mercury Rev is new at 32. The album is a tribute to US singer Bobbie Gentry’s album The Delta Sweete and features a different singer on each track.

View this week's Top 100 Official Albums Chart in full

Official Singles Chart

Aside from Ariana, Lewis Capaldi’s Someone You Loved makes big gains in this week’s Top 10, leaping six places to a new peak at Number 3. Another Lewis single, Grace, vaults 14 spots to Number 26.

Khalid & Disclosure’s brand-new track Talk opens at 16, earning the US singer-songwriter his tenth Top 40 single and Disclosure their sixth and first in almost four years.

AJ Tracey’s Psych Out rebounds back into the Top 40 and reaches a new peak at Number 18 following the release of his new album, and Tom Walker lands his second Top 40 single with Just You And I, up 39 rungs to Number 30.

Three more songs make their Top 40 debut: Who Do You Love? By The Chainsmokers ft. 5 Seconds Of Summer (34), Breathe by Camelphat & Cristoph ft. Jem Cooke (37), and viral hit Thotiana by US rapper Blueface (40).

Finally, following his tragic death last week, London rapper Cadet re-enters the Top 40 at 36 with his Deno Driz collaboration, Advice.

View this week's Top 100 Official Singles Chart in full

Related artists

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etin

0

You cant join an elite club with 65.000 sales.

MD

Michael dunn

1

Shame it's not from sales, mainly from free streams. Think she's more like number 6 in the sales charts. Not comparable to stats from the past

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Michael Jenkins

3

Much deserved, she is breaking all types of records.

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Marcothedonjuan

2

Congrats to Ariana! :)

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mildredfarts

2

all these chart records that are broken on an almost weekly basis should be categorised as pre or post download/streaming era.

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Piran

4

So pleased for Ariana on a week where she made UK chart history! :)

I don't know if I can say that 'Thank U, Next' is her best album, but it's certainly a step up from 'Sweetener'!

Right now, here's my rating of each track from it...

#1: Break Up With Your Girlfriend, I'm Bored (9/10)
#2: Thank U, Next (9/10)
#3: Bad Idea (9/10)
#4: Bloodline (8/10)
#5: Ghostin' (7/10)
#6: 7 Rings (6/10)
#7: Needy (6/10)
#8: Fake Smile (5/10)
#9: Make Up (5/10)
#10: NASA (5/10)
#11: Imagine (5/10)
#12: In My Head (4/10)

TOTAL: 78/120 (65%)

Outside of Ariana, I love that 'Who Do You Love?' still managed to debut in the Top 40.

Finally, it's still shocking to hear the news about what happened last Saturday! RIP Cadet.

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Foxes

1

I also absolutely love Ariana making UK chart history this week, and for me I would say that 'thank u, next' is my favourite album from her, since I'd currently give it an extremely good 97/100 (which is my rating of the album overall, not an average of the tracks), which actually makes it my 3rd favourite album of all time! It means that my Top 5 now looks like this:

1) Post Malone - 'beerbongs & bentleys' (99/100)
2) Ed Sheeran - 'x' (98/100)
3) Ariana Grande - 'thank u, next' (97/100)
4) Camila Cabello - 'Camila' (96/100)
5) Post Malone - 'Stoney' (94/100)

Right now I simply cannot decide which is my favourite track from the album, which means my rating of each track at the moment would be:

=1) 'break up with your girlfriend, i'm bored' (95/100)
=1) 'bad idea' (95/100)
=1) 'bloodline' (95/100)
4) 'thank u, next' (93/100)
5) 'fake smile' (92/100)
6) '7 rings' (91/100)
7) 'in my head' (90/100)
8) 'imagine' (88/100)
9) 'ghostin' (85/100)
10) 'needy' (84/100)
11) 'NASA' (83/100)
12) 'make up' (76/100)

Average: 1,067/1,200 (89%)

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Piran

1

Hey Gameskiller! :)
It's cool to see that 'Thank U, Next' is now your all-time favourite album by a female artist, although kind of disappointed that it beat 'Camila' for that title, since you know how much I adore the latter, haha.
Regarding for score for the album, you've given it 97% when you reposted your Top 5, but the track-by-track score comes to 89%. How does that work then?

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Henri Laitila

1

Sorry but how does the album have a score of 97 when your favorite song is 95?

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Foxes

0

'Camila' is still an absolutely incredible album, and it's very close to 'thank u, next' in my rankings as you can see with them being just 1/100 apart! Who knows, after a while 'thank u, next' might dip a little and allow 'Camila' to overtake it again, but for now 'thank u, next' is my favourite of the 2 by a very slim margin.
As for the album getting a 97/100 when the average score is 89/100, that's because I try to rate albums based on the album as a whole, rather than just rating the album's tracks. For me, an album's score is based on: the consistency of the quality of its tracks, how well the album flows as a whole, how many different sounds the album explores, and the average of its tracks. This is mainly because rating albums purely based on the average of the tracks would make it virtually impossible for any album to ever get 100/100 since every single track would need to have a similarly high score, which isn't very realistic, and I feel like rating them this way gives them a more accurate score that more fairly represents how much I like the album. For example, the average of 'beerbongs & bentleys' tracks is 1,589/1,700, or 93%, while its overall score is higher.
Taking 'thank u, next' as an example, I think the album has a very high consistency in terms of the quality of its tracks, the album flows very well as a whole from track to track, it explores a good amount of different sounds, and the average of its tracks is 89/100, so because of the 3 previous categories the overall rating for the album is higher than the average of its tracks. If there were another album with an average of 89/100, but it had terrible consistency, felt like it was thrown together randomly and didn't flow at all, and all of the tracks sounded very similar, the album would likely get a 75-80/100 rating, even though the average of its tracks was the same as an album I gave 97/100.

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Foxes

1

I gave a much more in-depth response to this in my reply to Piran, but essentially I try to base an album's score on the album as a whole, rather than simply rating its tracks. I rate albums based on: the consistency of the quality of their tracks, how well the album flows as a whole, how many different sounds the album explores, and the average of their tracks.

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Piran

1

I could see my score of 'Thank U, Next' going up from 65 in the coming weeks, but I don't see it ever matching 'Camila', which would probably be around 85 for me currently. I'd say that only 'Fearless' would be rated higher in my all-time favourite album by female artists, with at least 90!
That's fair enough about how you rated them. I get that tracklist ordering & versatility are two important features of an album.