The Top 40 biggest singles of 2011 on the Official Chart

2011 set a new record as the biggest year for single sales in Official Charts history.

Adele, who also dominated the end-of-year album chart, bagged two places in the 2011 year-end lineeup. Together the studio and live version of Someone Like You – performed at the BRIT Awards 2011 – sold 1.24m copies to become the biggest single of 2011 overall, with Adele's Rolling In The Deep also ending the year at Number 9 on just short of 799,000.

Despite never actually reaching Number 1 on the Official Singles Chart, Maroon 5 and Christina Aguilera’s collaboration Moves Like Jagger sold 1.04 million copies, finishing in second place on the year-end chart too and becoming the second biggest Number 2 of all time, after Wham's Last Christmas.

LMFAO’s Party Rock Anthem sold 995,000 copies to land in third, while, Jessie J and BoB’s Price Tag reached almost 982,000 sales and is fourth. Rihanna and Calvin Harris’s huge Number 1 We Found Love shifted over 902,000 to finish at 5 – and RiRi's S&M finished 12th on 644,000.

Mr Worldwide Pitbull had a great 2011, finishing twice in the Top 10 – Give Me Everything, with Ne-Yo, Afrojack, and Nayer, landed sixth on 866,600 sales, while his feature on Jennifer Lopez's On The Floor scored tenth place, on 785,000.

Bruno Mars landed two entries in the Top 20: Grenade scored 853,000 sales at 7, and The Lazy Song notched up 619,000 to finish at 15.

And what a year it was for singles sales in 2011. In the seven previous years, the singles market had been redefined and re-energised by the explosion of legitimate downloads. From 2004, sales of singles saw a five-fold increase, from 32m in 2004 to a record 177.9 million in 2011. The vast majority (99.3%) were sold as digital tracks and bundles. 1.1m CD singles were sold in 2011, representing just 0.6% of the total. All the Top 20 bestselling singles of 2011 sold over 500,000 copies each. But another record-breaking year was to come…

Official Top 40 biggest selling singles of 2011 

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