Drake clinches fourth Number 1 on Official Albums Chart with Certified Lover Boy

Drake pulls ahead at the last minute to deny Iron Maiden their sixth chart-topper.

drake-certified-lover-boy-1100.jpg

Drake clinches this week’s Number 1 on the Official Albums Chart with Certified Lover Boy, following a close battle with Iron Maiden’s 17th studio album Senjutsu.

Certified Lover Boy finishes with 46,000 chart sales, overtaking at the final whistle by just 1,200 units; with the album only available digitally, Drake’s total includes 96% on streaming. Across the album’s 21 tracks, fans in the UK racked up 70.4 million streams.

CLB marks Drake’s fourth Number 1 album in the UK, following Views (2016), Scorpion (2018), and Dark Lane Demo Tapes (2020).

See Drake's full Official Chart history here

Rock legends Iron Maiden claim the biggest physical release of the week with runner-up Senjutsu, with 88% of their sales made up of physical copies. The band also earn this week’s Number 1 on the Official Vinyl Albums Chart.

Meanwhile, London rapper Little Simz claims her first Top 5, and indeed Top 40 album with Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, which debuts at Number 4 and is the biggest-selling album in independent record shops this week. Close behind at Number 5 is ABBA’s Gold: Greatest Hits album, which lifts seven places following their comeback announcement and is at its highest position since August 2008.

MORE: All the Number 1 albums

Imagine Dragons bow at Number 7 with Mercury – Act 1, their fifth Top 10 album, and North East rockers The Wildhearts finish at Number 9 with 21st Century Love Songs, their second Top 10 collection.

Drum & bass group Rudimental return to the Official Chart with their fourth album Ground Control at Number 16, their fourth Top 20, while Tom Grennan’s chart-topping second album Evering Road returns to the Top 20 thanks to a new Special Edition featuring five new songs.

Finally, Lady Gaga’s Chromatica re-enters at Number 34 following the release of its new remix album titled Dawn of Chromatica, which itself bows at 56.

See the full Official Albums Chart Top 100

Join the conversation by joining the Official Charts community and dropping comment.

Already registered?

Log in

No account?

Register

avatar

Jamie Crampton

1

I don’t hate Drake even though his music is awful, just the fact that an “album” can sell virtually nothing and get to number 1. Spotify and streaming are for people who want to be their favourite’s biggest fan without actually buying anything of theirs.

avatar

Jonny Crompton

2

Fake Drake and his stream farms up to their usual tricks. The only way to stamp it out is to ban streaming from the chart numbers until the likes of Spotify clean up their act and put a stop to this practice.

avatar

Marko

1

Drake and Kanye West absolute trash.

avatar

Marko

-1

How can these metal heads listen to this trash The Wildhearts, it's awful.

avatar

stumurmer

6

For the 2nd week running a Number 1 album that only about 1800 people could be bothered to pay money for!!?? Chart sales for streaming really need to be looked at again for the albums chart. It's embarrassing...

avatar

Alfred Lock

3

All streamers are skinflints...Old school record buyers are just that..Up the vinyl and stick your streaming if you cannot be bothered to dig into your deep pockets like I still would.Physical sales are real sales.

NN

Nu No

0

I'm almost sure Record Labels / Artists Management must hire marketing companies that have multiple streaming accounts and tablets or phones streaming albums non-stop to add a few million streams (every 31 second of a song is already a full track stream that counts for sales and charts - they must do it 35 or 40 seconds to make sure it counts). Plus streaming ads for some artists new work are non stop and they get added to playlists in a "blink of an eye" (stream payola).

avatar

Jason blur

-1

Can't believe Maisie Peters gone from ,2 to 37.!... can't believe sad state of charts ..!.one song drake number one yeah...! every .song sounds the same . yeah!.

NN

Nu No

7

What were Iron Maiden sales numbers?
Were they able to sell over 40k pure sales as predicted? They sold a total of 44.800, right?

How much pure sales did Drake ended up with? Did it cross 2k?

Streams in UK have such a huge weigh. With these streams Drake would be #02 in Germany as they count half of what they do in UK. Countries need to get to an agreement if 1000 streams are 1 album or 2000 are 1 album or whatever. These discrepance does not help streams credibility when 1 equivalent album streaming sale gives the artist less than 10% of what a Pure sale gives (monetarily speaking).

avatar

Dim

0

Iron Maiden are used to release their albums during low competition with lower sales to go on top. Never release album mid October, November or December.
Their albums have multiple formats so one fan can buy at least 3 times the same album.
So their physical sales are not exactly "pure".
I don't defending Drake, but Iron Maiden momentum in top 5 and top 10 is the most 2 weeks.
So what's the point getting high position, when there isn't good chart run after.
Having said all that, I think that is good even for 1-2 weeks see some old bands in charts.

NN

Nu No

0

Well... last 3 Taylor Swift albums were #01 with just around 20k sales each... and one of them was released in December so nothing is what used to be.

Also last year Ariana Grande was #01 with around 25k sales in October.

avatar

Dim

0

Taylor was during general low point for the music's sales over the last years. Same goes for early Oct for Ariana. Generally from mid Oct the sales are increasing. Also now there is a boost and bigger competition. Something maiden avoid. Maiden don't have good sales after first week and their last two albums are double, thus 1 copy = 2 counting sales, if you count the multiple formats, which maiden fans are buying, then their true sales are nothing special.

JS

john snow

0

congrats to drake and folks in uk,lol.

avatar

Piran

5

Surprised that Iron Maiden didn’t take it with how much they sold this week! :O

JS

john snow

0

It hurts many Drake haters here,lol.

avatar

Piran

1

I'm not hating on Drake, I'm just saying that I'm surprised by the outcome! :P

JS

john snow

1

Not u. Of Course:)

avatar

Piran

1

Cool! Glad we cleared that up, haha. :)

avatar

Küll

3

Senjutsu, number 1 in Germany

NN

Nu No

0

Of course! In Germany 2000 streams are 1 album chart sale. In UK 1000 streams are 1 album chart sales. Even if streams and sales were equal (they weren't as Drake best European market is UK) Iron Maiden would always be #01 there as long as they were having pure sales.

avatar

Marko

1

Imagine Dragons with their worst album.
The previous was fantastic but this one is garbage.