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Mrluvaluva · 19-12-2008, 11:07 AM

Some time this morning (Friday) The Circus by Take That sold its millionth copy in the UK, and became the all-time second fastest album to reach a seven-figure sale.

The album was released just 19 days ago. The only album to reach a million more rapidly is fellow Mancunians Oasis’ 1997 album Be Here Now, which reached the target in 11 days.

The Circus has sold 991,508 copies up to close of business yesterday (Thursday) and has already been certified quintuple platinum, with Universal shipments exceeding 1.5m copies.

Initially available for as little as £5.88 physically (Asda) and £3 as a download (Amazon), The Circus is now hard to find for less than £8 in any format but continues to sell at a very rapid clip.

Remarkably for an album to sell so many copies in such a short time, it wasn’t available in the stricken Woolworths chain until this week. The retailer may be winding down but now has plentiful stocks of the album priced at £10.97 – though a blanket 10% reduction on audio products means the till price is £9.87.

Four other albums have sold a million copies in less than a month: in third place is Take That’s last album, 2006’s Beautiful World (27 days), Robson & Jerome’s self-titled 1995 debut and The Beatles’ 2000 compilation 1, both took 28 days, and Leona Lewis’ Spirit became a million seller after 29 days last year.

Beautiful World is by far Take That’s biggest seller, with to date sales of more than 2.5m. It will overtake former member Robbie Williams’ biggest-selling solo album, I’ve Been Expecting You, within weeks.

Take That’s return to prominence after more than a decade apart has been an unqualified success, and in addition to selling more than 3.5m copies of their two new albums since reconvening, they have sold nearly 1.7m copies of their compilation Never Forget – The Ultimate Collection.

With catalogue sales of their earlier three studio albums and a compilation, Take That have sold more than 5.5m albums so far this decade.

The Circus is the third or fourth album to sell a million copies this year, following Duffy’s Rockferry and Coldplay’s Viva La Vida.

It crossed the barrier almost simultaneous with The Kings Of Leon’s Only By The Night, which had sold 995,147 copies by close of business last night.

Meanwhile, fifth season X Factor champion Alexandra Burke’s cover of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah is on target to secure the highest weekly sale by a single for exactly two years.

Available since Sunday as a download, it secured its first trickle of physical sales on Tuesday, and has already sold 382,296 copies. The last single to sell more copies in a week was third season X Factor champion Leona Lewis’s debut single Bleeding Love, which dashed to first week sales of 571,253 in 2006.

Lewis’ latest single, Run, has been number one for the last two weeks but has now slipped behind Burke’s single and the late Jeff Buckley’s 1994 recording of Hallelujah. Run has sold 54,408 copies so far this week, Buckley’s Hallelujah 59,676.

Buckley’s version first surfaced in the Top 75 here in March, following ITV2’s screening of a cover by American Idol contestant Jason Castro, in the style of Buckley. It returned to the chart a few weeks ago, after being performed in The X Factor by Diana Vickers, who finished fourth in the contest.

Assuming Run doesn’t wrestle its way back to number two before the end of the week, Hallelujah will become the first song ever to hold down the number one and two slots in the chart simultaneously.

Original article here