July 21, 2016: Paul McCartney Named U.K.’s Top Album Artist

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Paul McCartney accepts the Official Chart Record Breaker, recognizing his achievement as the UK’s most successful albums act of all time.

It’s official! Paul McCartney is the most successful album artist of all time in the U.K. Macca’s landmark achievement was announced on July 21, 2016, exactly 60 years to the day after Britain’s Official Charts Company published its first LP popularity chart. The figures are staggering: Since his emergence in the early 1960s, McCartney has scored no fewer than 23 #1 albums—first, of course, as a member of The Beatles (15 chart-toppers), plus two with Wings, five as a solo artist and one with his late first wife, Linda McCartney. [The number has been updated to reflect 2020’s chart-topping McCartney III.

As the reigning king of the U.K. album charts, McCartney automatically became the recipient of the new Official Chart Record Breaker Award, which, noted his website, is presented to a selected elite of artists achieving the greatest feats on the Official Chart.

“The Official Albums Chart,” said an announcement on McCartney’s website, “represents the most trusted and longest established measure of album popularity in Britain.”

McCartney’s lengthy tenure as a best-seller in the U.K. goes back to May 1963, when the Beatles’ debut album, Please Please Me, began its stretch as the longest-running #1 debut album in chart history (30 weeks). In all, McCartney’s music has spent an estimated 192 weeks on the top of the Official Albums Chart, handing him another record: most weeks spent at #1.

In addition, said the announcement, the star was involved in the biggest-selling studio album of all time in the U.K., the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, a recording which has to date sold 5.1 million copies in Britain alone.

Upon receiving the 2016 news of his success, McCartney told OfficialCharts.com: “Okay, you know how it really feels? It feels unbelievable, because when you write your songs you don’t count how well they’re doing. I remember when ‘Please, Please Me’ went to #1, that was our first #1 record, and it’s a beautiful feeling to suddenly get this [award]. I mean it’s amazing. So thank you to the people for giving it to me, I love you. And thank you to everyone who made it possible by buying the records, we love you too!”

McCartney has placed albums on the U.K. chart every decade, selling an estimated 700 million albums globally. [Total as of 2016.] His recordings, apart from the Beatles, are available in the U.K. here, in Canada here and in the U.S./worldwide here.