James Blunt Produced decades best selling album

In the last decade, the UK’s bestselling album was James Blunt’s “Back to Bedlam”. This was Blunt’s 2004 debut album, some saw it as an easy listening masterpiece where as others thought it was boring and messy. However, it has just been announced as the most successful release by the Official Charts Company.

It appears that the American’s may have slightly better taste as their best selling album was the Beatles’ compilation disc 1. In Britain the Beatles only managed to make number six whilst the rest of the chart was filled by Leona Lewis, David Gray, ColdPlay, Scissor Sisters, Take That and a Dido record.

James Blunt has every right and reason to celebrate; however, he was not the decade’s most successful artist. If you count across releases and include back-catalogue slates the title belongs to Robbie Williams according to Music Week. Between January 2000 and the 26th September 2009 he managed to sell 12.18 million albums, next is Westlife who sold 10.14 million, Coldplay sold 9.12 million and Eminem sold 8.01 million. Eminem was also the top of the American’s ten year sales list just beating the Beatles. Robbie Williams also made the most albums in the last decade to reach the top one hundred with a total of five. For comparisons sake, Susan Boyle’s recent album is already at number 56.

Either way, when “Back to Bedlam” was released in 2004 it only sold 482 copies in the first week. It didn’t have UK chart success until the next year when frequent radio plays of “You’re Beautiful” made the song part of Britain’s culture. The song and the album managed to sell a further three million copies in the UK.