17 June 2021

What was your favourite album of 2020? And which sold the most units, or got the most streams? It was a crowded field, for sure – according to OfficialCharts.com, a record-breaking 43 albums topped the chart over the year – that’s not far off one a week.

And what effect did lockdown have on our music listening and buying habits?

According to BPI (the UK’s music industry body), consumption rose for a sixth consecutive year. In 2020, 155 million albums were streamed or bought – up 8.2% compared with 2019. There were 139 billion audio streams in the UK in 2020 (up by over a fifth compared with 2019), and nearly 200 artists were streamed over 100 million times. Streaming now accounts for 80.6% of the UK’s music consumption.

The charts, however, are made up of streams and physical sales. After years of the latter declining, in 2020 they boomed again – in fact, for 28 weeks, physical sales accounted for 50% of chart sales of the number one album. Vinyl sales increased by 11.5%, with almost 4.8 million copies bought. CDs account for 10.3% of the UK’s recorded music consumption, with 16 million sales in 2020.

And the other effects of the pandemic on music? Obviously, the live music sector was devastated, but BPI flagged that though demand for music fell at the start of the first lockdown, it rebounded and continued to grow throughout the year.

Let’s take a look back at the 20 bestselling albums of 2020, from Scottish wunderkind Lewis Capaldi, to ‘heritage acts’ such as Queen and Fleetwood Mac, and even posthumous hits, including Juice WRLD’s Legends Never Die and Pop Smoke’s Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon.

Need great music for your projects? Check out our Top 40 for our clients’ current favourites, or our playlists with our new releases.

Top 10 Most Sold Albums

1. Divinely Uninspired to a Hellish Extent , Lewis Capaldi

Singer-songwriter Lewis Capaldi’s debut collection topped the Official Album Charts for a second year in a row. Originally released in May 2019, it was the fastest-selling album of the year (outselling all the top 10 combined in the UK and Ireland). He hit a million sales in September 2020. The album logged four weeks at number 1 last year (following a six-week run in 2019).

Capaldi’s unbroken 77-week run in the Top 10 is a record for a solo artist. Spotify ranked Divinely Uninspired to a Hellish Extent the most-streamed album of 2020 in the UK.

2. Fine Line, Harry Styles

Another album bridging two years’ sales is Harry Styles’ second, Fine Line, released in December 2019. Boosted by huge pop-rock hits ‘Watermelon Sugar’, ‘Falling’, ‘Golden’ and the joyous ‘Treat People with Kindness’, the album notched up 293,000 chart sales in 2020.

Harry Styles’ album took second place in Spotify’s rankings of the most-streamed albums of 2020, reflecting the fact that pop was the most popular genre of the year – presumably because we yearned for happy music during the pandemic.

Fine Line was nominated for Album of the Year at the 2020 Brit Awards and Best Pop Vocal Album at the 2021 Grammys, but perhaps its biggest accolade was its spot on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time in 2020.

The old-skool Hollywood glamour of the ‘Treat People with Kindness’ video, starring Fleabag’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge, has clocked up over 30 million views since it premiered on 1st January 2021, and we can see why. If you can’t nail the dance routine, join in with the clapping.

3. Future Nostalgia, Dua Lipa

Dua Lipa takes the crown for the UK’s biggest album released in 2020. Her second album was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize and spent four weeks at the top of the charts. The Guardian hailed its ‘pristine club-pop’ and loved Lipa’s references to Olivia Newton-John, turn-of-the-millennium Madonna, 1980s INXS and Lily Allen, giving it the number 2 slot on its 50 Best Albums of 2020 list and calling her, ‘one of pop’s most exciting major players: she out Gaga’d Gaga and out Kylie’d Kylie’. The artist told Variety, ‘this album is purely about dancing and having fun and being free and being in love.’

Dua Lipa was nominated for six Grammys (including Album of the Year) and won Best Pop Vocal Album, selling 265,000 copies and topping the charts in 15 countries. According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), Future Nostalgia was the tenth most successful album of 2020 worldwide, with 3.3 million album-equivalent units sold.

Check out Dua Lipa’s video for ‘We’re Good’, which has had over 50 million views (stay tuned for the twist at the end…)

4. When We Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go, Billie Eilish

The American singer-songwriter’s debut studio album, which she co-wrote with her brother, Finneas O’Connell, was released in March 2019, after her viral hit, ‘Ocean Eyes’, which was released when she was just 13. Its blend of pop, electropop, avant-pop and art pop was apparently inspired by night terrors and lucid dreaming (hence the cover art) and explores dark themes of mental health and addiction – but there’s more to her than horror.

The album’s immediate success made Eilish the youngest female solo star to chart at number 1 in the UK. She’s the youngest artist to do lots of things: write a Bond theme (‘No Time to Die’) and win Album of the Year at the Grammys (stealing that particular crown from Taylor Swift). She’s even the first artist born in the 21st Century to have an American number one.

She swept the board at the 2020 Grammys: Best New Artist, Album of the Year, Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Engineered, Non Classical, whilst monster international hit ‘Bad Guy’ won both Record of the Year and Song of the Year. Overall, the album is Spotify’s eighth most streamed ever.

The blood-spattered video has over a billion views on YouTube, but as Vogue says of its latest cover star: ‘Voice of a generation. Avatar of internet mega-fame. Icon of body positivity. A lot rests on Billie Eilish’s 19-year-old shoulders’. It’s clearly just the beginning.

5. Heavy is the Head, Stormzy

Released in December 2019 on the artist’s own #Merky label, Heavy is the Head is Stormzy’s second studio album. Featuring collaborations with everyone from Aitch and Burna Boy to H.E.R., Yebba and Ed Sheeran, the album debuted at number 2 and topped the chart on 10th January 2020.

NME described it as, ‘a broad-reaching, genre-buckling romp’, while the Observer highlighted that, ‘it is a mark of artistic integrity that Stormzy manages to transcend genre (again), without sacrificing his core griminess, or losing too much in the way of accent, word choice, content or theme.’

Stormzy claimed the Official Chart Double in January 2020, as ‘Own It’ ft Ed Sheeran & Burna Boy and Heavy Is The Head both hit number 1; something that no other British rapper has ever achieved. It marked the first of four official chart doubles in 2020, as Eminem, Drake and Ariana Grande also hit double top.

‘Vossi Bop’ had previously become the Glastonbury headliner’s first chart-topping single in the UK – check out the video, which has had over 115 million views to date, and was one of the best of 2019.

6. Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon, Pop Smoke

The UK’s biggest debut album of 2020 was Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon. It debuted in July at number 2, topping the chart 12 weeks later. This made it both the first chart-topping debut of the year, and the first ever posthumous number 1 debut album by a solo artist.

Bashar Barakah Jackson, aka Pop Smoke, was a US rapper, singer and songwriter, considered by many to be the face of Brooklyn drill. He released his debut mixtape, Meet the Woo, in July 2019, and his first top 10 US hit was Meet the Woo 2, released in February 2020.

Just two weeks later, Pop Smoke was fatally shot during what was believed to be a botched robbery in LA. 50 Cent exec-produced his posthumous debut studio album, which was released in July 2020. It debuted at number 1 on the Billboard 200, with international top 10 singles including ‘For the Night’ and ‘What You Know Bout Love.’

7. No.6 Collaborations Project, Ed Sheeran

The Guardian’s four-star review described Ed Sheeran as an ‘affable everyman dabbling in grime, hip-hop, balladry and Latino love songs as he zooms down the middle of the road to world domination.’

The songs feature duets with everyone from Cardi B to Camila Cabello, Justin Bieber, Bruno Mars and Skrillex, Stormzy, J Hus and even Eminem, with the result that the album, ‘sounds not unlike a Top 20 rundown or Spotify’s Hot Hits UK playlist,’ according to the Guardian.

Sheeran’s fourth studio album, released on 12th July 2019, was nominated for a Best Pop Vocal Album Grammy. By the end of 2019, it had sold 1.1 million pure (physical and digital) copies worldwide, ranking seventh bestselling album of the year.

8. Greatest Hits, Queen

2020 was a good year for Queen. Their Greatest Hits – the UK’s bestselling album of all time – became only the third album ever to log over 900 weeks on the chart. Yup, that’s over 17 years. And it appropriately achieved the chart milestone 50 years after Queen’s first gig (when the group were known as Smile), at the City Hall in Truro, Cornwall.

Their live album, Live Around the World, also hit number 1 in October, making 2020 the first year since 1994 to have two live albums at the top of the charts.

No doubt boosted by Bohemian Rhapsody, the Oscar-winning biopic, featuring ‘Killer Queen’, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, ‘We Are The Champions’ and ‘We Will Rock You’, Queen’s Greatest Hits initially peaked in second place on the UK album chart before rising to number 1, where it remained for four weeks.

9. Diamonds, Elton John

Another greatest hits compilation boosted by a biopic (2019’s Rocket Man), is Elton John’s Diamonds. Spanning 1970-2016, it was originally released in November 2017 to commemorate 50 years of Elton and lyricist Bernie Taupin’s professional partnership.

In August 2020, the BPI certified Diamonds 2x Platinum for sales of 600,000 units, while in the US, it was certified Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of American for sales of one million units. From ‘Your Song’ and ‘Tiny Dancer’ to ‘I’m Still Standing’ and the Disney classics, ‘Can You Feel the Love Tonight’ and ‘Circle of Life’, Diamonds brings all the landmark hits together.

Elton supports artists as varied as Ed Sheeran (who’s signed to his Rocket music management group) and Dua Lipa (who headlined his annual AIDS Foundation pre-Oscars party this year) and is, by his own admission, obsessed by the charts. ‘I’m Still Standing’ seems an appropriate choice.

10. 50 Years – Don’t Stop, Fleetwood Mac

As you might expect, 50 Years – Don’t Stop, the box set by Fleetwood Mac, originally released in November 2018, marked 50 years since the band’s formation. The three CDs span 1967 to 2013. And what a history: as LouderSound.com says, ‘They began as a British blues boom band, complete with obligatory back-alley album cover shot and a repertoire of amped-up R&B numbers, evolved into a proper early-70s rock band, moved towards a more melodic repertoire, and then turned into a multi-platinum rock-pop soap opera, which they remained as pretty much for three decades, before fading gracefully into stadium nostalgia.’

With plenty of remastered tracks and a few live ones, the hits span everything from ‘Albatross’ to ‘Rhiannon’, ‘Little Lies’ to ‘Go Your Own Way’ and ‘The Chain’ on the first collection to explore their entire career, from their early days to their success as one of the most enduring bands in rock history.