Harry Styles has debuted at No.1 with As It Was, the lead single from third album Harry’s House (Columbia). The LP is released on May 20.
As It Was opened with chart sales of 94,140, according to the Official Charts Company - the fastest-selling single of 2022 so far.
During its first week, the single amassed 10,499,853 streams in the UK, as well as 3,034 downloads.
As It Was is Harry Styles’ second UK No.1 single. It arrived almost five years to the week since his introductory solo single, Sign Of The Times, became his first chart-topper.
The impressive result for As It Was makes it the highest weekly sale achieved by any of Styles’ solo releases, replacing Sign Of The Times, which sold 74,636 copies on debut in 2017.
Sign Of The Times (1,301,119 sales to date) is one of four solo million sellers by Styles. Watermelon Sugar, which took 38 weeks to reach its peak of No.4, is Styles’ biggest hit with consumption of 1,770,445.
As revealed by Music Week’s charts analysis by Alan Jones, As It Was moves Harry Styles ahead of Zayn Malik – the only other member of One Direction to have a solo No.1 – both in terms of No.1s and total solo career hits, this being his 12th to Malik’s 11. Their erstwhile colleagues Liam Payne and Niall Horan have each had eight hits, while Louis Tomlinson has had four.
Harry Styles already tops the list for cumulative singles sales among One Direction members with his tally prior to this week being 10,260,395, ahead of Malik (7,013,056), Horan (4,516,699) and Tomlinson (1,328,389). Overall consumption of One Direction tracks stood at 20,880,141.
With the excitement surrounding his return, Harry Styles’ Fine Line climbed 28-6 on the albums chart with consumption increasing 58.31% week-on-week. Fine Line has total sales to date of 579,135.
Click here for our Fine Line cover feature on Harry Styles.
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