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ELTON JOHN

Sir Elton John is one of the most successful and long-standing acts in UK chart history. In a career now spanning 6 decades, Elton has amassed 10 UK Number 1 singles and 8 Number 1 albums.

Elton John lays claim to the best-selling single of all time in the UK, 1997's Candle In The Wind, a re-written and re-recorded version of their 1973 hit Candle In The Wind. The reversion was performed at the funeral of Princess Diana and released on 13 September 1997 as a tribute to Diana, Princess Of Wales, with proceeds donated to Diana's charities.

In 2021, Elton broke an Official Chart record as the first artist to achieve Top 10 singles across six consecutive decades. That year, he also added three consecutive UK Number 1 singles to his tally including Cold Heart with Dua Lipa, Merry Christmas with Ed Sheeran, and completing the hat-trick with the coveted Christmas Number 1 of 2021 - Sausage Rolls For Everyone with LadBaby.

ELTON JOHN Songs stats

UK No1s
10
UK Top 10s
36
UK Top 40s
72
UK Top 75s
92
Weeks at No1
28
Weeks in the Top 10
165
Weeks in the Top 40
523
Weeks in the Top 75
799

ELTON JOHN Albums stats

UK No1s
8
UK Top 10s
33
UK Top 40s
44
UK Top 75s
51
Weeks at No1
30
Weeks in the Top 10
302
Weeks in the Top 40
989
Weeks in the Top 75
1426

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The best-selling singles of all time on the Official UK Chart
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The UK-tel Generation

1

There is an error with the entry for the album Love Songs. The TV Records release only charted in 1982 and 1983. The chart entry for 1995-98 should be the release by Mercury (PY 900 528 788-2).

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Tony Strawson

2

Cliff Richard was in actual fact the first artist to achieve top ten singles in six consecutive decades.
1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s.
If you examine Cliff Richard's official singles chart history you will see that I am factually correct.

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Blank

2

Fun fact:
Elton John has never had a solo #1 on first release. Cold Heart this week extends that to 8 #1s. All of his #1s have either been collaborations, re-issues, re-recordings or remixes.

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AdrenalineRush1996

1

Correct.

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Blank

0

Thanks. I was amazed back in the 90s when I first heard this fact, and his total was 5. Quite surprising he's had 3 more since and the fact still stands

NC

Nigel Coleman

0

Something About The Way You Look Tonight/ Candle In The Wind 97.

NC

Nigel Coleman

1

Nearly right.

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Blank

2

Candle In The Wind 97 is a re-recording of a song that was previously a hit *twice* (Original and the 1988 live version). Let's face it, no-one was buying that record for Something About The Way You Look Tonight, even if I think it is the better song.

NN

Nu No

3

We all know that Cliff Richart was the first artist to have TOP 10 singles in 6 consecutive decades (Despite what the Official Charts is saying now) but where is Elton John TOP 10 single during the 10's decade that isn't listed here?

Something is very off... are Elton John and The Official Charts trying to re-write Charts History and Charts Records? You could say that "Cliff Richard and The Driffers" is not just Cliff Richard but that isn't any different from "Elton John and Dua Lipa".

It's still amazing that "Cold Heart" just got to #01 and I'm very happy about it as both Elton John and Dua Lipa deserved it after 3 weeks at #02.

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Blank

1

Find it funny that they've now deleted all the comments pointed out the glaring error! I think Elvis too has been top 10 in at least 6 decades (though not in the 80s, so I don't think it's consecutive): 50s, 60s, 70, 90, 00s certainly. I'd have to look up 80's and 10's to make sure.

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AdrenalineRush1996

0

No, they're not trying to rewrite anything.

NC

Nigel Coleman

0

Step Into Christmas

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Jamin Day

0

"Step Into Christmas" peaked #8 in 2019.

AR

Anthony Rogers

2

Where is " it's a sin " with Years & Years from 2021

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Blank

0

Listed under Years & Years only for some reason.

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Maria Valladolid-Hutton

0

Did Elton's song ever reached the top 10 in the black charts?

NC

Nigel Coleman

0

Bennie and the Jets was the No1 black record in Detroit in the US.

J

JRSB

1

It's a shame that Madman was such a low seller over here. Definitely one of his best albums IMO.

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Techfan

2

One thing that Elton John accomplished in the Billboard Hot 100 was charting with at least one song in the Top 40 for 30 straight years, from 1970 to 1999. That's a quite an impressive feat that might never be matched since it requires both longevity and consistency. In the OC Singles chart, if I counted correctly, he managed to chart with a song in the Top 40 in 27 out of his 29 first years (1971-1999) charting.

LT

Luciano Torres

0

Well, Madonna have top 40 songs since 80's. That's why she's the Queen. Just like Elton.

NC

Nigel Coleman

0

He would of carried that on longer if it wasn't for streaming and Downloads.
A sign of going backwards.
The good news is cd Singles have made a 20% increase in sales.

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Mark Canham

0

I just spotted this mistake also - Are you ready for love didn't reach number one until 2003 - total flop the first time around. Sacrifice/Healing hands was his 1st solo number one single.

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Velvet Android

0

This site is inconsistent like that. The 2003 run should have a separate entry as it was a reissue, not a simple re-entry. For some reason though they're counted together here, whilst lots of other artists' reissues (or even just re-entries) are granted separate listings, sometimes for no discernible reason – e.g. I happened to look at the Smiths' chart history just now, and most of their albums appear twice (pointlessly) for this reason.

NC

Nigel Coleman

1

It's like Your Song reached no 7 back in 1971 and Step into Christmas reached no 24 back in 1973. It's only years later they reached higher positions.

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Velvet Android

2

Yes, the record for Your Song here is objectively wrong: the no.4 peak, shown on this page as a re-entry for the 1971 hit, isn't even for the same version of the song. That 2002 run was for Elton's rerecording of it as a duet with tenor Alessandro Safina, which by any metric should receive its own entry on this page.

Likewise, the Are You Ready For Love example mentioned above definitely holds water, since the song was remixed and officially rereleased 24 years after its initial minor chart entry – and, indeed, so does that of Sacrifice/Healing Hands, which were both total flops on first release in 1989 before receiving a double A-sided Number One reissue the next year. This page does get that one right, presumably only because the editors found it harder to mix up the songs' original solo entries with their conjoined rerelease.

For me at least, that should be the way to list things – it's the same as the Guinness British Hit Singles books' method, which was ideal: remixes, rerecordings and straight reissues got separate listings. They used to list all re-entries separately as well, but dropped that circa 2000 for space reasons, which was fair enough.

With Step Into Christmas, on the other hand, we're entering a greyer area. Nowadays, in the download/streaming era where nobody actually goes to buy a single and the concept of a 'release' is so nebulous, it's not quite the same thing. The record company no longer needs to reissue the song at Christmastime for it to return to the charts, it just re-enters digitally of its own accord. So it counts as a simple re-entry and as such any additional weeks in the modern Top 100 get tagged onto the original issue's chart run. Which, by the above methodology, makes sense.

At the same time, of course, it's certainly arguable that this methodology is no longer fit for purpose. If a classic song suddenly outdoes its original position from decades earlier via a random burst of streaming thanks to briefly raised visibility (use in an advert, a film, some viral thing, the ubiquity of festive favourites, etc.), causing its unique chart history to get eclipsed or at least 'muddied', do we want that?

I guess the only way to draw the distinction between original (physical sales) chart runs and modern re-entries though is by drawing an arbitrary line in the sand – saying that anything released before a certain date but re-entering now gets a new listing, to distinguish its established 'proper' chart history from it simply sneaking back in digitally, unbidden.
Problem is, of course, where do you draw that line? Make it only things from before 1980? Before 1990? 2000? Early 2006 when downloads started to count? Whatever date streams started to count? Somebody will be critical whatever you do. It's a bit of a conundrum.

NC

Nigel Coleman

0

Are You Ready For Love. Reached no42 in 1979 then reached No1 in 2003.

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Blank

1

Physical only is up to Feb 2005 (I think). 2005-2007 was Digital with a requirement for a physical single. 2007-2017 was digital (download) with no requirement for a physical single. Whenever streaming came in is the absolute game changer. Even with downloads, up until that point, you can count whole units one-to-one so it's still sort of on the same playing field. Post-streaming and the chart is essentially determined by the artibrary ratios.

Change the ratios = change the chart, even if the public consuption remains the same.

BTW, Sacrifice / Healing Hands is correct. They were released both separately and reissued together. The reissue is an entry in it's own right not related to the previous separate entries. A similar release pattern in the digital era would be very ambiguous.

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Olli Manninen

2

Are you ready for love didn't reach Number 1 at least the first time released.

S

SiameseGirl

0

No it was Bright Eyes that was No 1 at that time. It wasn't number one until August 2003.

NC

Nigel Coleman

1

No it only reached no42 first time round in 1979

Z

ZX

0

According to these listings Elton John had a number one in 1979 with Are You Ready For Love. Except he didn't - it was in 2003. The new website is littered with the same inaccuracies as the old one. It makes me wonder how accurate the actual charts are....