Rag ‘N’ Bone Man Powering to Albums Chart Title in U.K.
Rag 'N' Bone Man is outselling the rest of the week's top 20 combined.
Rag ‘N’ Bone Man, winner of the 2017 Brits Critics Choice Award, is fulfilling the faith shown in him with an impressive showing on the mid-week U.K. sales charts. The homegrown singer-songwriter is blowing away the competition on the U.K. albums chart and he’s about to bust Ed Sheeran’s record-breaking run at Nos. 1 and 2 on the U.K. singles chart.
The Sussex-born Rag ‘N’ Bone Man (real name Rory Graham) is dominating the field with his debut Human, which has the clocked up more than 70,000 combined sales to head the Official Chart Update. Remarkably, the album is outselling the rest of this week’s top 20 combined.
Human leads nine new albums cruising into the top 40, including three poised for top 10 debuts: Thunder’s Rip it Up (No. 2 via Ear Music), Nines’ One Foot Out (No. 4 via XL) and Devlin’s The Devil In (No. 10 via Devlin Music).
Sheeran’s “Shape of You” (Asylum) is still the best-selling single at the midway point of the chart week, though the title track to Rag ‘N’ Bone Man’s debut album rises to No. 2.
Sheeran’s “Shape Of You” and “Castle On The Hill” have ruled the official weekly chart for the past five weeks, setting a new mark for the longest-ever run in the top two of the U.K. chart (besting Justin Bieber’s four week stint at Nos. 1 and 2 with “Sorry” and “Love Yourself” in 2015). “Human” will break Sheeran’s stranglehold of the survey if stays at No. 2 at week’s end as “Castle On The Hill” falls to No. 3 on the midweek chart.
The top five is respectively rounded out by Jax Jones featuring Raye’s “You Don’t Know Me” (Polydor) and Zayn & Taylor Swift’s I Don’t Wanna Live Forever (RCA/Republic), from the Fifty Shades Darker soundtrack.
Katy Perry could score the week’s highest singles chart debut with “Chained To The Rhythm,” which features Skip Marley and starts at No. 6 on midweek sales data. “Chained To The Rhythm” dropped last Friday and is the first release from the U.S. pop singer’s forthcoming fourth album.
Sheeran, Rag N Bone Man and Katy Perry should stay high in the U.K. charts for some weeks to come. They’re all booked to perform at the Feb. 22 Brit Awards in London.