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Ed Sheeran scores the rare Official Chart double as Perfect and Divide claim Number 1
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Ed Sheeran scores the rare Official Chart double this week, as Perfect notches up a second week at Number 1 on the Official Singles Chart, while its parent album ÷ reclaims the top spot.
A week before 2017’s Official Christmas Chart, Ed’s Perfect is in pole position, propelled to the summit last week thanks in part a new mix featuring Beyoncé. Another new version featuring classical singer Andrea Bocelli has been released today (Dec 15). Check out this year's Official Christmas Number 1 contenders here. To be the first to find out who's leading this year's Christmas Number 1 race, sign up for the Official Charts Newsletter and opt in to Breaking News bulletins.
Meanwhile, Ed’s latest album ÷ returns to the top spot for an 18th non-consecutive week at Number 1, dethroning Sam Smith’s The Thrill Of It All, which slips to 2.
It’s the third time Ed has managed the Official Chart double this year, when ÷ and Shape Of You were both at Number 1 for individual weeks in March and April.
Making up the remainder of this week’s Official Albums Chart Top 5 are P!nk’s Beautiful Trauma (3), Michael Ball & Alfie Boe’s Together Again (4) and Rag’n’Bone Man’s Human, which climbs eight places to return to the Top 10 at 5.
New entries and high climbers
Michael Buble’s Christmas album lifts two spots this week to return to the Top 10 at 10. The festive collection spent three non-consecutive weeks at the top on its release in 2011, and has returned to the Top 10 every year since. It’s also this week’s most streamed album, with 7,500 of its sales coming from streams. Check out the biggest selling Christmas albums this century here.
Further down, three albums return to the Top 40: The Killers’ latest set Wonderful Wonderful jumps nine places to 34, Niall Horan’s debut Flicker moves from 41 to 39, and former Keane frontman Tom Chaplin sees his yuletide collection, Twelve Tales Of Christmas, leap 12 places to Number 40.
View this week's Top 100 Official Albums Chart in full
Look back at every Number 1 single on the Official Chart in 2017 so far below:
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I Am A Stegosaurus
No offence, but who cares about the Andrea Boccelli version?
Foxes
Following on from my review of '÷' last week, and to celebrate it going back to #1 this week (proving I'm a psychic :D), it's time for me to review Ed's previous album, 'x'!
'x' starts off with an emotional song, and the first song that Ed wrote for the album, 'One'. This is a song that I quite like, and I'm always impressed with the note Ed holds towards the end of the song. I'd never be able to hold a note for that long! It then goes into another song that sounds like it could've come from '+', and one of my personal favourites on the album, 'I'm A Mess'.
'Sing' and 'Don't' were two of Ed's singles from the album, and they follow at places 3 and 4, respectively. While 'Sing' managed to make it to #1 in the UK, 'Don't' is my favourite of the two. Straight after is a song called 'Nina', which is another song I really like from the album. The song tells a story of heartbreak and of Ed telling his ex that she shouldn't be with him.
Immediately after is another single from the album, 'Photograph'. While I much prefer some of the live versions of the song that Ed has performed, I definitely still like the album version! The 7th song on the album is 'Bloodstream', and those of you who follow my chart or have seen some of my other comments will already know how I feel about this song. I think it's an absolutely fantastic song! This was my favourite song of all time for ages, and I still absolutely love it!
Coming from that high, we have a song that, while I still like it, isn't going to come close to being my favourite on the album any time soon: 'Tenerife Sea'. This is a great wedding song though, and apparently Ed actually plays it more at weddings than 'Thinking Out Loud'. After that the album goes into 'Runaway', another song that I really like, albeit less than some of the others on the album.
'The Man' is one of the least popular songs on the album (and is the least popular on the regular version of the album on Spotify), yet it's one of my favourites from the album. I really like the rap-ish style that the song goes for and the fact that it's actually got quite an emotional message behind it. We then get to what used to be Ed's biggest single, before 'Shape of You' came around, 'Thinking Out Loud'. Despite this being the most popular song from the album, it's actually one of my least favourites. Anyone who's read either of my previous album reviews will know that I'm not generally a fan of slower songs, and 'Thinking Out Loud' is no exception.
The final song on the regular version of the album (though we are by no means finished yet, with 2 other versions of the album greatly increasing its track count), 'Afire Love', is a song about his grandfather's passing, and can be considered as a kind of prequel to 'Supermarket Flowers'. I much prefer 'Afire Love' to 'Supermarket Flowers', though.
The first song on the Deluxe version of the album, 'Take It Back', is a rap song that follows a trend set by 'Eraser' last week, in that I absolutely love it! I would say that I slightly prefer 'Eraser', but 'Take It Back' is still one of my favourite songs on 'x'. Sadly, the next song is almost the exact opposite. 'Shirtsleeves' is one of my least favourite songs, as is 'Even My Dad Does Sometimes', the song that comes straight after.
Then we have what I like to call the "movie section" of the album, as 'I See Fire' and 'All Of The Stars' are the next two songs on the album. 'I See Fire' is from 'The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug' and is the song that I like slightly more than 'All Of The Stars' from 'The Fault in Our Stars'. Both are pretty close for me, though.
The Wembley Edition of 'x' is a new version featuring 5 extra songs, released by Ed in 2015 following his sold-out 3-night stint at Wembley Stadium, and the first new song on it is 'English Rose'. This song gives off a slightly country vibe, and while it's far from my favourite song on the album, I still like it. 'Touch and Go' has a start so similar to 'Runaway' that the first time I heard 'Touch and Go' I thought it was 'Runaway', but as the song carries on they differentiate themselves from each other.
'New York' is quite a relaxing song at first listen, but a deeper look at the lyrics show that it's a song about feeling lost and the prssure of trying to please society but not yourself, while 'Make It Rain' is a cover of Foy Vance's song that Ed originally performed on the soundtrack of the TV show 'Sons of Anarchy'. Ed's vocals on 'Make It Rain' are absolutely incredible, and it's one of my favourite songs on the album because of that.
The final song on 'x', 'Lay It All On Me', is a collaboration between Rudimental and Ed that ended up peaking at #12 in the UK, and I think that it's a really good song. Not quite as good as some of the others on the album, but still very good.
Overall, I'd give the album a solid 10/10. At the moment it's my favourite album of all time, but it definitely shouldn't feel secure in that position with 'Camila' coming out in just a few weeks. I've loved this album ever since it was first released and I've never really lost my love for it. My review of '+' is coming next week and then my review of 'Camila' is coming on January 19th (the week after it's released).
Track by track rating (from worst to best):
22) 'Even My Dad Does Sometimes' (61/100)
21) 'Shirtsleeves' (63/100)
20) 'Thinking Out Loud' (66/100)
19) 'English Rose' (67/100)
18) 'Touch and Go' (69/100)
17) 'All Of The Stars' (72/100)
16) 'New York' (73/100)
15) 'Photograph' (75/100)
14) 'I See Fire' (76/100)
13) 'One' (79/100)
12) 'Tenerife Sea' (80/100)
11) 'Lay It All On Me' (84/100)
10) 'Runaway' (85/100)
9) 'Afire Love' (87/100)
8) 'Sing' (88/100)
7) 'I'm A Mess' (91/100)
6) 'Don't' (92/100)
5) 'Take It Back' (93/100)
4) 'Nina' (95/100)
3) 'The Man' (98/100)
2) 'Make It Rain' (99/100)
1) 'Bloodstream' (100/100)
J
Jack
'thanks in part a new mix featuring Beyoncé' this doesn't make sense...
A
Andrew
I can hear the champagne corks popping at OfficialCharts towers from here. "Thanks in part to a new mix" - completely because of more like. Could we have a breakdown of the figures for Perfect 1, Perfect 2 with artist 2 please, so we can judge the degree of "thanks" owed to this "new mix"?
Piran
It's good that 'Perfect' got another week at #1, but I'm really hoping 'Last Christmas' will be the Christmas #1 next week! That would be an amazing tribute to George Michael.
I'm ecstatic to see 'All I Want For Christmas Is You' re-peak after 23 years, even though that's as high as I think it'll get this festive season.
I look forward to next week's chart! :)