Ed Sheeran’s incredible run of chart success is reaffirmed today as he is crowned by the Official Charts Company as the UK’s Official Number 1 Artist of the Decade.

The Suffolk singer-songwriter turned global superstar is the recipient of a special Official Chart Record Breaker Award, celebrating the outstanding achievement of:

Most Number 1s across the Official Singles and Albums Chart between 2010-2019 (12 Number 1s)

Most weeks at Number 1 across the Official Singles and Albums Chart between 2010-2019 (79 weeks)

Ed is only the third recipient of the prestigious Official Record Breaker award from the Official Charts Company, who compile the UK’s Official Chart, as heard exclusively on BBC Radio 1 and MTV. Previous recipients including Justin Bieber (the first act in history to hold all top 3 positions in the Official Singles Chart simultaneously), and Sir Paul McCartney as the biggest albums act of all time (22 Number 1s across his career).

Ed comments “Thank you to everyone who’s supported me over the past 10 years, especially my amazing fans. Here’s to the next 10!”

Martin Talbot, Chief Executive of the Official Charts Company, comments: “Ed truly has dominated this decade and is a worthy recipient of this amazing new award.

“At the start of the decade, he was a little known (albeit highly rated) young 18-year-old lad from Suffolk - but his catalogue of achievements since then are genuinely remarkable. Today, he is firmly established among the highest level of global music superstars.”

Shape Of You named as the official biggest song of the decade>/b>

Ed Sheeran made his chart debut in 2011, when The A Team reached Number 3, kicking off his rise to superstardom. His first Number 1 came along in 2014 with Sing, and Ed has since claimed a total of eight chart-topping tracks across the decade, most recently with Take Me Back To London ft. Stormzy this September.

Aptly, Ed Sheeran banks the UK’s biggest track of the 2010s with Shape Of You, which spent 14 weeks at Number 1 in 2017, amassing over 4.5m chart sales, and is one of three Ed tracks in the Top 5 end-of-decade list - Thinking Out Loud (3) and former Christmas Number 1, Perfect (5). Ed has racked up a massive 38 weeks at Number 1 on the Official Singles Chart to date, shifting an incredible 53.8m combined singles, his tracks have been streamed an eye-watering 4.6 billion times in the UK alone.

Total chart domination

No other act has scored more Top 5s, Top 10s or Top 20 hits this decade, or spent longer in the Official Chart Top 40 during that period than Ed’s mind-blowing 572-week residency.

In the last few days, Ed has now also surpassed 1,000 weeks in the Top 75 (1002 weeks), the only other artists in history to have reached this milestone are Elvis Presley, Cliff Richard, and Rihanna. Elvis achieved his 1,000 weeks in approximately 20 years, Cliff did it in 30 years, while Rihanna took some 11 years. Ed has reached the milestone in just 8 and a half years.

Chart breaker

In a quirk of the streaming era, Ed also famously “broke the chart” in March 2017 when the release of his Divide album propelled all 16 tracks into the Official Singles Chart Top 20 in the same week. Official Chart rules have since changed to incorporate a limit of three tracks per artist, leaving Ed likely to hold the chart record forever as the artist with the most simultaneous Top 40 singles.

On the albums front, Ed is no stranger to breaking chart records there either – Divide, is the fastest-selling album by a male soloist of all time after clearing a staggering 672,000 copies in its opening week, and Ed became the first and only act in chart history to log a whole year in the Top 10 with three different albums. It’s no surprise then that three of Ed’s albums feature in the Top 10 biggest albums of the decade, led by X at Number 3 (3.5 million chart sales). All four of his albums, +, x, Divide and No.6 Collaborations Project, have now shifted 10 million combined sales, and spent 41 weeks at the summit of the Official Albums Chart, more than any other artist this decade.

1. SHAPE OF YOU - ED SHEERAN
2. UPTOWN FUNK - MARK RONSON FT BRUNO MARS
3. THINKING OUT LOUD - ED SHEERAN
4. DESPACITO (REMIX) - LUIS FONSI FT. DADDY YANKEE AND JUSTIN BIEBER
5. PERFECT - ED SHEERAN
   6.ONE DANCE - DRAKE FT WIZKID & KYLA
6. HAPPY- PHARRELL WILLIAMS
7. ALL OF ME - JOHN LEGEND
8. SORRY - JUSTIN BIEBER
9. RATHER BE - CLEAN BANDIT

Behind Shape Of You is Mark Ronson’s 2014 pop juggernaut Uptown Funk ft. Bruno Mars on 3.28 million chart sales. Despacito (Remix) by Luis Fonsi ft. Daddy Yankee and Justin Bieber (No.4, 3.14 million) was the UK’s song of the summer 2017 and now the world’s most-watched music video on YouTube of all time. Other notable entries in the Top 100 list:

Longest running Number 1 of the decade – at 15 weeks, Drake’s One Dance (No.6, 3.04 million) is also one of the longest-running Number 1s in UK chart history.

The one that never went away - Despite being released in 2004, the popularity of Mr Brightside by The Killers has endured over the past decade and ranks 12th of the 2010s with 2.5 million chart sales. The song is still a regular feature in the weekly Official Singles Chart Top 100.

The leading ladies – Just under a quarter of the list is made up of female-led singles, the biggest being Adele’s Someone Like You (16); the five-week chart-topper that turned the Tottenham singer-songwriter into a global megastar in 2011. Sia’s Cheap Thrills follows close behind (18), and Dua Lipa’s 2017 Number 1 New Rules is at 27.

The one-hit wonders – a string of artists scored one huge Top 40 single this decade; Passenger with his 2013 hit Let Her Go (19), OMI’s Cheerleader follows (22) while Lukas Graham’s 7 Years ranks at 30; Mr Probz’s 2014 chart-topper Waves (41), Gotye’s Somebody That I Used To Know (42), Walk The Moon’s Shut Up & Dance (44), Calum Scott’s Dancing On My Own (54) and Vance Joy’s Riptide (65).