Kylie Minogue has landed her ninth No.1 album with Tension (BMG).
The Music Week cover star’s 16th album underlines the strength of her creative partnership with BMG. In addition to the chart-topping 2019 collection Step Back In Time, the label has now earned three consecutive No.1 studio albums with Kylie Minogue since she signed to the label.
Tension opened at No.1 with sales of 53,237 (Official Charts Company), outselling the rest of the top eight albums combined. The breakdown for Tension was: 44,152 physical copies (20,168 CDs, 19,159 vinyl albums, 4,825 cassettes), 5,122 downloads and 3,963 sales-equivalent streams. The result puts the album at No.5 in the biggest week one sales of 2023 so far.
Tension also topped this week’s vinyl albums chart, and claimed No.1 on the Official Record Store Chart as the most purchased album in the UK’s independent record shops.
The result puts BMG at No.1 this week in the Top 75 record label market shares for Artist Albums (18.42%) and All Albums (18.09%). BMG is also No.2 as corporate group behind Universal in the same categories.
Kylie Minogue celebrated the success of the campaign this week with a heavily oversubscribed Shepherd’s Bush Empire show, as part of the O2 Priority gigs series.
Alistair Norbury, BMG president repertoire & marketing, said: “It’s a hat-trick! This is the third consecutive No.1 album Kylie has achieved with BMG in the UK.
“The remarkable performance of her pop-up shop at Piccadilly Circus and the ecstatic reaction to her set at Shepherd’s Bush Empire show just how far she has come. We are so pleased for her. But what’s just as significant is the growth in streaming and international success we’ve generated over that period.”
The No.1 follows singles chart success for viral hit Padam Padam – Kylie’s first Top 10 solo single since 2010 – and Top 20 follow-up Tension.
“The success of Tension is a huge testament to the way Kylie has been able to reignite her core audience at the same time as connecting with a new generation through platforms like TikTok,” said Jamie Nelson, UK SVP A&R recordings, BMG. “The album is more contemporary than anything she has produced in the past 15 years. For an artist at this point in her career to do that is extraordinary. You probably have to go as far back as Cher’s Believe 25 years ago to find anything like it.”
Tension’s week one sales were comparable to those of Disco in November 2020 (54,905), and ahead of the 48,032 copies for Golden in April 2019.
As revealed in Alan Jones' charts analysis, Kylie Minogue’s debut album, Kylie, remains her biggest seller with to-date sales of 2,134,461, with 2002 release Fever (1,744,371) in second place.
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