Ed Sheeran’s X becomes a million-seller: "I'm f**kin' buzzin'!"

Ed Sheeran's X has become a million-seller in the UK. 

Data released by the Official Charts Company and music trade body BPI reveals that X has reached million-selling status and in doing so becomes the first artist to achieve the feat within a calendar year since Emeli Sande's Our Version Of Events in 2012. 

X - which has amassed sales in excess of of 1.005m - places Ed in an elite group of British artists who have achieved the landmark in the UK over the past few years, including Adele in 2011 (21 and 19), Take That in 2010 (Progress) and Susan Boyle in 2009 (I Dreamed a Dream).

With the peak Christmas trading period still to come, it is likely the album will be certified 4x Platinum (equivalent to 1.2m copies) by the BPI before the end of 2014.

"F**kin' buzzin'!" Ed quipped, on hearing the news from OfficialCharts.com of ‘x’ smashing 1 million sales.

Ben Cook, President, Atlantic Records UK, comments: "Ed is a phenomenal artist at the top of his game and his album reaching this impressive milestone so quickly only serves to underline that. X is Ed at his original and inventive best - we're absolutely thrilled for him that it joins ‘+’ in the ranks of the million-sellers and are delighted that so many people love it as much as we do."

Official Charts Chief Executive Martin Talbot, said: “What an incredible year for Ed Sheeran – having the best-selling and longest-running No.1 album of 2014 so far, two Number 1 singles, and now X hitting the million album sales mark in the space of just a few months. 2014 has well and truly belonged to the Suffolk lad.”

The BPI’s Gennaro Castaldo added: “The million-selling success of X confirms Ed Sheeran’s arrival as a global superstar. Ed is breaking chart records for fun at the moment, which should come as no surprise given his songs clearly connect with fans in such a profound way.”

With eight straight weeks at the top of the Official Album Chart upon its release on 20th June 2014 (and a further week at the top since then), X is not only the UK’s fastest-selling and longest-running No.1 artist album of the year, it is also the longest-running No.1 since Adele’s 21, which topped the charts for 11 consecutive weeks back in 2011.

In its first week of release in June, all twelve songs from the standard version of X flooded into the Official Singles Chart Top 100 after also performing exceptionally well on streaming services.

Underlining a year of chart records for Ed, his single Thinking Out Loud went on to top the Official Singles Chart after a mammoth 19 weeks in the Top 40, becoming the song with the longest climb from entering the Top 40 to the Number 1 spot in history.

The much-loved track has since smashed Official Chart records for the most number of streams of a track served in one week (1.638m). X has also given the BRITs-winning singer-songwriter his first ever US Number 1 album, while it also achieved the remarkable feat of dominating the UK iTunes store in its week of release, with 8 of the top 10 most downloaded tracks all coming from the album.

Ed is of course no stranger to a million-seller, his debut album, +, released in September 2011 hit the 1 million mark in 2012 and has sold 1.87 million copies to date.

The million-selling artist albums to have hit the milestone within a calendar year over the last five years appear below:

© 2014 Official Charts Company. All rights reserved.