It has been confirmed that Meat Loaf’s Bat Out Of Hell is the best-selling debut album in UK chart history.
More than 3.5 million copies of the single, a campy mashup of heavy rock and Broadway flair, have been sold in the UK, where it spent 530 weeks in the top 100.
It bested James Blunt’s Back To Bedlam, which was ranked second overall and is the biggest debut by a British artist in honor of National Album Day.
Leona Lewis’s Spirit and Lady Gaga’s The Fame come after Blunt.
Along with Dido, the Spice Girls, Alanis Morissette, and Coldplay, the top 10 list also includes successful first albums by Ed Sheeran, Adele, and Oasis.
On Saturday, BBC Radio 2 will play the top 20 songs, and BBC Sounds will have a more extended program with the top 40 songs.
Presenter Steve Wright, who is hosting the countdown as the first of his new special projects for the station since abandoning his long-running afternoon position and reverting to a weekly show on Sundays, stated “Bat Out Of Hell reaching number one might be a surprise to some.”
The sad passing of Meat Loaf earlier this year allowed the record to reach a whole new audience, Wright continued. “But it is a very fantastic debut album,” he said.
The album, billed as an OTT rock opera, has the nine-minute title tune in addition to singles like You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth and Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad.
It was turned down by four record labels because it was so utterly out of style during the disco and punk eras. But when it was ultimately published in 1977, a memorable performance on the BBC TV program The Old Grey Whistle Test helped it to become an instant hit in the UK.
Despite coming in first on this list, Bat Out Of Hell only places 21st overall among the best-selling albums in the UK. Greatest Hits compilations and albums by musicians who were in the middle of their careers predominate on that list.
The top 20 albums on the special list are predominately debut albums that were released in the late 1990s and early 2000s, just around the time that CD sales peaked.
Dido’s No Angel, Keane’s Hopes, and Fears, and The Killers’ Hot Fuss are among the albums from that period.
In The Lonely Hour, Sam Smith’s debut album from 2014, is the most recent record on the list, while Mike Oldfield’s classic Tubular Bells, released in 1973, is the oldest.
Nothing from the 1960s entered the top 20, therefore albums like Please Please Me by The Beatles and the self-titled debut of The Rolling Stones were left out.
This is the result of several circumstances, including a smaller population in the UK and less access to home audio equipment during a period when singles were the predominant sales format.
Albums weren’t seen as legitimate artistic endeavors until later in the decade, thanks to ground-breaking albums like The Beatles’ Revolver, The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, and Bob Dylan’s Blonde On Blonde.
The fifth annual National Album Day has just passed. Thirty-first albums, including Lady Gaga’s The Fame on light blue vinyl and The Spice Girls’ Spice on white vinyl, will be made available in collector formats to commemorate the occasion.
The BPI, the trade group for the British music industry, has unveiled the biggest-selling debut albums from every country and region of the UK.
In the northwest, Maybe by Oasis triumphed, and Arctic Monkeys from Sheffield won at home in Yorkshire.
The best-selling album by a Welsh musician is Duffy’s Rockferry, followed by Emeli Sande’s Our Version of Events for Scotland and Katie Melua’s Call Off The Search for Northern Ireland.
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