Divide and conquer: Ed Sheeran album breaks chart records around the world
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Version 0 of 1. Not content with owning this week’s UK charts, Ed Sheeran has taken his quite frankly terrifying pop dominance across the world. After topping his home country’s album charts with ÷ (Divide) and filling nine of the top 10 places on the single charts, Sheeran set his sights on Australia. Divide is also a number one album there, and Sheeran’s Shape of You has logged its ninth successive week at the summit of the ARIA singles chart, too. Divide’s 15 other tracks all cracked the Australian Top 40 – the first time any living artist has had more than 14 singles in the Top 100 at the same time. In fact, the troubadour ended up with 18 tracks charting as fans who clearly couldn’t get enough Sheeran propelled some of his back catalogue faves into the bestsellers list. In the US, Sheeran scored number one singles and albums, scoring the best sales week of 2017 so far for the latter, with 451,000 total albums (322,000 of which came from traditional sales). This more than doubled the opening week sales of his previous chart topping album, Multiply. For those thinking “Sure, but not everybody’s lost the plot”, consider this: Sheeran is also sitting at the top of the charts in Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Sweden. He’s probably number one on Venus too. It’s as if nobody has bothered listening to the very helpful music critics who pointed out that the album isn’t actually very good. Writing in the Guardian, Harriet Gibsone said the album “reeks of nostalgia and comfort, campfires, scented candles, spilt pints of Guinness and, for those not enthralled by his algorithmic songcraft, the sharp stench of a salesman’s cheap cologne”. Pitchfork was just as scathing, awarding it a lowly 2.8 score. And yet it seems the era of Sheeran’s dominance is only just beginning, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Be afraid. Be very afraid. |