This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Artist News Media
Burke is a million seller
By CMU Editorial | Published on Monday 12 January 2009
Alexandra Burke has joined the million-seller list with her debut single, Christmas chart topper, ‘Hallelujah’, which is also reportedly the best selling UK single by a UK female artist ever (only best selling ‘UK’ female because Kylie has had a bigger seller – bitch).
By topping a million sales with her pretty average Leonard Cohen cover, Burke beats former ‘X-Factor’ queen Leona Lewis, who sold 850,000 copies of her debut single ‘A Moment Like This’.
Only ten artists have shifted more than a million copies of a single in the UK so far this decade – most of them, like Burke, TV talent show related. The ten best sellers, in order, are as follows..
1. Will Young – Anything Is Possible/Evergreen
2. Gareth Gates – Unchained Melody
3. Tony Christie ft Peter kay – (Is This The Way To) Amarillo
4. Shaggy ft Rikrok – It Wasn’t Me
5. Band Aid 20 – Do They Know It’s Christmas
6. Kylie – Can’t Get You Out Of My Head
7. Shayne Ward – That’s My Goal
8. Hearsay – Pure And Simple
9. Alexandra Burke – Hallelujah
10. Bob The Builder – Can You Fix It
Given that four of the ten are Sony releases, and all four of those come from a Simon Cowell project, you can see why the ‘X-Factor’ man is such an important asset for Sony Music, and possibly its greatest acquisition from its partnership with BMG.
And Cowell provided quadruple rewards for Sony with his most recent chart topping adventure because not only has the major enjoyed Burke’s million seller, but the whole thing also shifted new copies of the Jeff Buckley and Leonard Cohen versions of ‘Hallelujah’ (in the case of the former, enough copies to take it to number two in the chart), both of which were released by Sony labels. And not only that, Sony’s publishing company, Sony/ATV, manages the rights to the song itself. Win, win, win, win.
Sony/ATV chief Marty Bandier recently spoke to Billboard about the recent UK resurgence of the classic song, saying: “‘Hallelujah’ is one of those songs, it’s been around for a while and it never ceases to catch the attention of people when it’s played and performed. Simon Cowell is one of the great song people in the world, there’s no question that he has the ability to recognise incredible melodies and lyrics and knows what works”.
“So I think that for him to pick this song, I think first of all it’s a tribute to him and I think we’re proud of the fact he would pick that song. But we’re also proud of the fact that we’re involved with that song and his selection of it only reinforces our own view about how spectacular the song is”.
