Adele smashes Official Chart records with comeback single Hello

Congratulations to Adele, who makes a triumphant return to the Official Singles Chart with her new single Hello this week.

The track’s opening week combined sales are a staggering 333,000, making it the biggest Number 1 single in three years, since James Arthur’s X Factor winner’s single Impossible  (490,000 sales) in December 2012.

The combined sales figure is made up of a huge 259,000 downloads plus a record-breaking, staggering 7.32 million streams, smashing the previous streaming record held by Justin Bieber’s What Do You Mean? by almost double. Bieber previously held the record with 3.87 million plays in a week last month.

MORE: See this week's full Top 100 Official Singles Chart

Chart Fact: Excluding X Factor / Pop Idol winners’ singles, major charity campaign records and Christmas Number 1s, Hello has bagged the second biggest ’regular’ Number 1 of the millennium - only pipped by Shaggy’s It Wasn’t Me, which managed 345,000 sales in a week back in 2001.

Martin Talbot, chief executive of the Official Charts Company said: "The success of Hello this week underlines what an extraordinary artist Adele is - a once in a generation artist, who appeals to kids, teenagers, mums, dads, aunts, uncles, grandmas and grandads. To make such an impact, across both streams and sales, is the sign of a truly universally popular artist.”  

Hello becomes Adele’s second Number 1 on the Official Singles Chart, after 2011’s Someone Like You. Click here to see where all of Adele’s singles and albums charted.

Meanwhile, Justin Bieber is forced to settle for this week’s second highest new entry with his latest track Sorry. However the song shifted an impressive 102,000 combined sales in its opening week, including a massive 4.48 million streams, beating his own streaming record.

The rest of this week’s Top 5 is made up of Drake’s Hotline Bling at 3, Sam Smith’s Writing’s On The Wall, which rebounds seven places to Number 4, and The Weeknd’s The Hills is at 5.

New entries

Further down this week’s tally, MNEK and Zara Larsson’s Never Forget You reaches a new peak at Number 11 for its fourth week in the Top 40, Macklemore jumps two spots to 14 with Downtown, and Little Mix’s Love Me Like You climbs four spots to 28. 

See this week's Top 100 Official Singles Chart