Cowell Haiti single hits 200,000 sales

10:56 | Tuesday February 9, 2010

The Syco-issued cover of the REM classic, which features acts including Susan Boyle, Michael Buble, Cheryl Cole and Leona Lewis under the collective name Helping Haiti, is comfortably outselling the rest of the Top 20 combined, according to OCC sales figures.

It will now be a question of just how many copies it will end up selling before the chart week ends at the close of business this Saturday, with the only chart battle now left to determine being who will occupy the runners-up position on the countdown.

Island’s Owl City with Fireflies, which spent a third week at number one last Sunday, is the week’s second biggest seller so far with a sale that is less than one-tenth of that of Everybody Hurts. Timabland featuring Katy Perry’s Interscope/Polydor-issued If We Ever Meet Again, which moved up to three on last Sunday’s chart, is the week’s third top seller, while J/RCA’s Alicia Keys with Empire State Of Mind (Part II) and the Epic-issued Don’t Stop Believin’ by Glee Cast completing the top five.

While the race is over on singles, a close battle for top spot is playing out on the artists albums chart between two long-established UK acts with newly-issued albums. Virgin’s Massive Attack are ahead at present with Heligoland as they seek their third number one on the chart, but they are fewer than 2,000 sales ahead of Sade’s new RCA album Soldier Of Love. Sade has only topped the chart once before, back in November 1985 with Promise.

Alicia Keys’ J/RCA album The Element Of Freedom, which gave her a first number one on last Sunday’s chart, is the third biggest seller at this early stage of the week, but is itself fewer than 1,000 sales behind Sade. The closeness of the week’s biggest sellers is further emphasised by Decca’s Andre Rieu with Forever Vienna and Atlantic’s Paolo Nutnin with Sunny Side Up, the fourth and fifth top sellers of the week so far, both only a few thousand sales off the number one position.

There is plenty of new release activity outside the Top 10 with entries expected from Deutsche Grammophon’s Rolando Villazon, Warner Bros’s Him, Gil Scott-Heron with his XL debut I’m New Here and Sony’s Barry Manilow and Virgin’s UB40 with Valentine’s Day-targeted sets.