News

Take That's Progress Sets New Sales Record

• 23rd Nov 2010

Take That have set a new sales standard with their latest album ‘Progress’, which has achieved the biggest opening week sales of any album for 13 years – the Official Charts Company has confirmed.

The album sold almost 520,000 copies last week, more than the rest of the Top 10 biggest selling albums put together, to top Sunday’s Official Albums Chart, according to Official Charts Company data.

The achievement represents the highest one-week sale for any album this century and one of the all-time fastest sales – the album sold more than Coldplay’s ‘X&Y’ in 2005 (465,000 week one) and Take That’s ‘The Circus’ in 2008 (432,000 week one).

In fact, the last album to sell more than 500,000 copies in a week was Oasis’s ‘Be Here Now’, which sold 663,000 in its first chart week – after being released on the Thursday.

Official Charts Company managing director Martin Talbot says, “Since their reunion as a four-piece four years ago, Take That have firmly established themselves as the UK’s favourite band.”

“Following the return of Robbie Williams to their ranks, that record has been further cemented – and they are now well on course to rule Christmas 2010, just as they dominated Christmas 2006 and 2008.”

Take That’s reunion album, ‘Beautiful World’, sold 2.5m copies in the UK and held the Number One spot for 8 weeks, with its 2008 follow-up ‘The Circus’ selling 1m copies in just 18 days on its way to 2.2m sales to date, and was Number One for 5 weeks.

Then, earlier this year, they announced plans to reform with their erstwhile fifth member Robbie Williams. Earlier this month, ticket sales for next year’s Progress tour broke all records to secure Progress as the fastest and biggest selling tour in UK history with a total of 1.34m tickets sold, the first million going in just eight hours.

As lead single from the ‘Progress’ album, ‘The Flood’ entered the charts two weeks ago at number two to secure the band their 16th Top 5 hit single.