Ed Sheeran goes to numbers one, three and four

Ed Sheeran has staged another chart takeover with his star-studded No. 6 Collaborations Project.

The album, which contains duets with Bruno Mars and Camila Cabello, topped the charts with sales of 125,000, more than the rest of the Top 30 combined.

Beautiful People, the record's mellow opening track, has also gone to number one in the singles chart.

Stormzy collaboration Take Me Back To London and Cross Me, featuring Chance The Rapper, also made the top five.

Sheeran would probably have had more singles in the Top 40, but the Official Charts Company currently limits the countdown to three tracks per artist.

The rule was brought in three years ago after Sheeran's previous album ÷ propelled 16 songs into the Top 20.

That spells good news for rapper AJ Tracey, who earns his first top 10 single with Ladbroke Grove, which climbs six places to reach number six this week.

It also results in the bizarre disappearance of Sheeran's former number one I Don't Care from the countdown.

Co-starring Justin Bieber, the track was at number two last Friday - but this week it vanishes.

(The song also fell foul of an obscure chart rule, which penalises older songs that have passed their sales peak).

However, Sheeran won't lose too much sleep over the methodological intricacies of the UK's chart rules.

All three of his previous albums are in this week's Top 40, while he has a record 69.15 million monthly listeners on Spotify - meaning his music is being played by 32% of the site's 217m active users.

See the full chart on BBC Radio 1

Elsewhere in this week's album chart, Lewis Capaldi's Divinely Uninspired To A Hellish Extent slips to Number 2; while the soundtrack to A Star Is Born jumps 20 places to number five after the film launched on Sky Cinema this week.

In the singles chart, Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello's steamy duet Senorita drops to number two; and Whitney Houston returns to the top 20 for the first time since her death in 2012, thanks to a vocal sample on Kygo's Higher Love.

 

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