Dream start for Boyle album

10:39 | Tuesday November 24, 2009

With the highest first-day sales of the year so far for an album, the Syco release is currently outselling the rest of the week’s top five sellers combined, according to Official Charts Company figures, and could well beat the highest first-week sales of 375,872 for a debut album set by Leona Lewis two years ago.

Boyle’s virtually guaranteed debut at the top of the artist albums chart this coming weekend will be accompanied by her first hit single as her cover of The Rolling Stones’ Wild Horses, which she performed on The X Factor last Sunday, is poised to debut in or around the Top 10 of the singles chart.

The strong sales for the Britain’s Got Talent runners-up’s album will mean yet another week when the top of the UK albums chart is filled by an X Factor star guest, while her nearest sales challengers have both performed on the show this season: 2008 finalists JLS and 2006 winner Leona Lewis.

However, Peter Kay looks likely to break X Factor’s stranglehold on the top of the UK singles chart where the last five chart-toppers have been by artists who have performed on the show. Kay’s Children In Need single The Official BBC Children In Need Medley, which debuted at 18 on the chart last Sunday, has opened up a 17,000 sales lead in the week so far. Its closest rival is The X Factor Finalists 2009’s version of the Michael Jackson hit You Are Not Alone, which debuted at number one last weekend.

Lady GaGa’s Interscope/Polydor single Bad Romance is the biggest sales gainer among the Top 10 sellers in the week so far just as a new version of her The Fame album, entitled The Fame Monster, heads towards a Top 10 debut on the albums chart. Rihanna’s brand new album Rated R is also expected to start life in the Top 10, while fellow Mercury act Mariah Carey’s Memoirs Of An Imperfect Angel is not far behind. Like Boyle, both Carey and Rihanna will have new entries in both the singles and albums charts this coming Sunday with Carey expected to enter the singles countdown with her cover of the Foreigner chart-topper I Want To Know What Love Is and Rihanna claiming another hit with Russian Roulette.

On the albums chart another busy week for new albums should result in chart entries this weekend from the likes of Epic’s The Priests and Decca’s Fron Male Voice Choir as well as new retrospectives from Janet Jackson (Polydor), UB40 (Virgin) and Britney Spears (Jive/RCA).