The Top 100 biggest songs of the past 10 years revealed

Ed Sheeran’s monster smash Shape of You has been named as the biggest song of the Official Chart's streaming era (July 2014 – present), Official Charts can exclusively reveal.

To mark 10 years since streaming began counting in the Official Singles Chart, we’ve crunched the numbers to reveal the biggest hits of the past decade, taking into account physical sales, digital downloads and streaming.

Coming in at the top of the 10-year chart – in what will not be a surprise to many – is the biggest hit of Ed Sheeran’s career, an artist whose success across all formats is unmatched, and whose transition into superstardom was further supercharged by the advent of streaming. Ed's streaming success quite literally ‘broke’ the Official Chart and contributed to changing its rules forever.

As such, Shape Of You reaches the summit as the Official biggest song of the last decade with an astounding haul of 6.29 million UK chart units; including 864,000 digital downloads and over 627 million streams.

Released in 2017 as the co-lead single to Ed’s blockbuster third studio album Divide, Shape of You debuted at Number 1 on the Official Singles Chart, becoming Ed’s third UK Number 1 single (his all-time tally now stands at 14).

Originally written with Rihanna in mind and then offered to Little Mix, the trop-pop influenced Shape Of You remains Ed’s probably best known chart hit, and that’s for a reason! It stayed at Number 1 for a eye-popping 14 weeks, one of the longest runs of any chart-topping single in UK chart history. Only four singles in history have lasted longer; Frankie Laine’s I Believe (18 weeks), Bryan Adams’ Everything I Do (I Do It For You) (16 weeks), Wet Wet Wet’s Love Is All Around (15 weeks) and Drake’s One Dance (15 weeks).

Confirming his place as the defining artist of the Official Chart's streaming era, Ed also lands no less than eight more tracks in the Top 100; Perfect (3), Thinking Out Loud (5), Castle on the Hill (14), Bad Habits (17), Photograph (36), Galway Girl (39), I Don’t Care with Justin Bieber (61) and Shivers (71).

Coming in at Number 2 is Lewis Capaldi’s emotional ballad Someone You Loved, which still holds the distinction of being the most-streamed song of all time in UK chart history (698 million streams). It was Lewis' second single to chart and first Number 1, pushing him into mega-success as one of the UK’s most popular artists of the past five years.

The biggest hit on the list from the pre-streaming era, The Killers’ 2004 hit Mr Brightside stands tall at Number 4. Its continued embrace as Britain's go-to indie party anthem saw it recently named by Official Charts as the UK's biggest song of all time to never reach Number 1 on the Official Singles Chart.

The Weeknd’s Blinding Lights is the most recently released track in the Top 10 (6), while it’s joined by George Ezra’s Shotgun (7), Drake’s One Dance ft. Wizkid and Kyla (8), Mark Ronson & Bruno Mars’ Uptown Funk (9), which is officially named as the best-selling song of the past decade (1.7 million sales, 99% of which were digital downloads.)

Finally, the Top 10 is completed by Luis Fonzi, Daddy Yankee & Justin Bieber with Despacito (Remix) (10), which completely transformed the validity of Latin music in Western music markets and helped the emergence of world-conquering, forward thinking artists such as Bad Bunny, Rosalía, Karol G and more.

Hozier's debut single Take Me To Church just misses out on a place in the Top 10 (11), while Australian busker-turned-hitmaker Tones & I scores the biggest song for a female artist with former 11-week Number 1 Dance Monkey (12), while not too far behind is elusive chanteuse Mariah Carey with All I Want For Christmas Is You (13).

Completing the Top 20, we have entries from James Arthur's Say You Won't Let Go (15), WHAM! with festive classic Last Christmas (16), Vance Joy’s Riptide (18), a second entry from George Ezra with Budapest (19) and Walk The Moon’s funky Shut Up & Dance (20).

Dua Lipa sinks two entries in the Top 40 with One Kiss with Calvin Harris (21) and the viral hit that started it all, New Rules (31), Adele also pops in to say Hello (36) as does Taylor Swift on her million-selling Number 1 Shake It Off (37).

Oxford indie rockers Glass Animals have enjoyed continued virality of their Top 5 lockdown hit Heat Waves (40). Singer Dave Bayley reflected with Official Charts on the incredible streaming success of Heat Waves in the UK, “It’s wonderful to hear that Heat Waves is one of the UK’s most-streamed songs of all time. I still have to pinch myself! It’s wild thinking about it.

"It was the most personal song I’d written up to that point, but that’s also a reason why I thought it might not do very well. I thought ‘is it too personal, too introspective?’ But, actually, it made me realise that honesty and introspection’s an asset. I really wanted it to be a single, it was so important to me, but I don’t think any of us expected it do exactly what it did. Its success gave me the courage to write more honestly going forwards."

The Official Top 100 biggest songs of the streaming era