Emeli Sande closes in on Adele for biggest selling album of 2012

Emeli Sande basks in what is turning into a truly breakthrough year, as the singer/songwriter’s post-Olympic sales momentum continues this week helping her to a fifth non-consecutive week at Number 1 on the Official Albums Chart, 28 weeks after release.

The recent boost given to double platinum album Our Version Of Events has seen Sande close in on fellow solo star Adele and her record-breaking album 21. 

This week’s performance puts Sande’s Our Version Of Events just over 6,000 copies behind Adele’s 21 in the race to be the biggest selling album of 2012 so far, having sold nearly 647,000 copies since its February 2012 release. The album has never dropped out of the albums Top 10 since. 

Digitally speaking, in the year to date Our Version Of Events has eclipsed 21’s performance, selling nearly 200,000 copies of the album as downloads, versus 21’s 158,000.  However, there is still a long way to go for Sande, and indeed most other artists, before reaching 21’s total lifetime sale of over 4.42m copies in the UK alone.

New Entries And Highest Climbers

A total of seven new entries feature in today’s Official Albums Chart Top 40, led by Bloc Party. Following a three year hiatus, indie rockers Bloc Party are back with Four, the week’s highest new entry (Number 3).  Four gives Kele Okereke and co their fourth UK Top 10 album, following 2005’s Silent Alarm, 2007’s A Weekend In The City and 2008’s Intimacy.

The Darkness’ Hot Cakes (4) awards te band the second Top 10 album of their career, their first being 2003 chart topper Permission To Land. Jessie Ware, singer/songwriter and former SBTRKT guest vocalist bags herself a debut Top 5 album today with the critically-acclaimed Devotion.  US R&B star Trey Songz scores his first Top 40 album on UK shores this week and with Chapter V, featuring hit singles Simply Amazing and Heart Attack, at Number 10. 

Julio Iglesias’ 1  is at Number 18, while X Factor 2010 finalist Aiden Grimshaw claims his first Top 20 with long-awaited debut, Misty Eye, featuring hit single Is This Love, is at Number 19. Watch an exclusive track-by-track interview with Aiden below:

Owl City’s The Midsummer Station (34) completes this week’s Top 40 new entries.

The week’s highest climber comes courtesy of raw Ohio blues rock outfit The Black Keys, whose album El Camino enjoys a 223% week on week sales uplift, bouncing 43 places upwards to its highest ever chart position (Number 7). 

The band have been busy playing Reading and Leeds festivals this weekend and have today announced a UK arena tour, taking in five dates across the country this December, culminating at London’s O2 Arena.

The Official Albums Chart Top 10 is as follows. Click here to see the full Top 100 after 7PM.

© 2012 the Official Charts Company. All rights reserved.