That's the lowest tally for any seven day cycle since SoundScan started quantifying data 19 years ago, falling more than 300,000 sales short of the previous low of 5.60m for the chart week ending 13 June 2009.

Given that the US population is slightly more than five times that of the UK, that's equivalent to a weekly sale here of just 1.05m, whereas actual UK sales for the same week were more than 1.57m. To put it bluntly, on a ...