The Million Sellers: Culture Club's Karma Chameleon

To celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Official Singles Chart, Culture Club producer Steve Levine chats OfficialCharts.com about the group’s million selling single Karma Chameleon.

There are only 123 million selling singles in the 60 years of the Official Singles Chart, and Culture Club’s Karma Chameleon is part of this very elite club.

Peaking at Number 1 upon its release in September 1983, Karma Chameleon stayed at the top of the Official Singles Chart for a staggering six weeks, and went on to become the biggest selling single of that year. To date, it has sold 1.47 million copies in the UK alone.

Among the many trophies Karma Chameleon earned for Culture Club were BRIT Awards for Best group and Best Single of 1983, and the Best New Artist award at the Grammys.

The track featured on the Culture Club’s second album, Colour By Numbers, which topped the Official Albums Chart for five weeks, while it spent six weeks at Number 2 on the US Billboard Chart, unable to budge Michael Jackson’s Thriller from the top spot.

OfficialCharts.com caught up with Steve Levine, the group’s award winning producer (he picked up a BRIT Award for Best Producer for his work on the track) to find out how Karma Chameleon came together.

The full list of the UK’s 123 million selling singles, and the stories behind them, feature in a new Official Charts Company book, entitled The Million Sellers which is published by Omnibus Press (you can purchase it online from Amazon here, or get the Kindle edition here.