Glee Breaks Beatles Single Record
Posted on 07. Oct, 2010 by Dahlia Lithwick in Entertainment, Headlines
Glee Breaks Beatles Single Record – The cast of US TV show Glee have beaten The Beatles’ record for the most appearances in the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart by a non-solo act. This week, there are six new entries which brings their total to 75 chart entries as compared to The Beatles’ 71.
Only Elvis Presley and James Brown have scored more US hits, 108 and 91 respectively.
Glee is a story of a high school choir of misfits. According to music sales tracker Nielsen SoundScan, it has shifted 2.8 million albums and 11.5 million downloads. The cast of Glee have also overtaken Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin.
After each episode is broadcast, songs from Glee are released digitally. After last week’s show, five covers of Britney Spears songs debuted in the latest chart. Amongst them was a version of the singer’s UK number one Toxic, which made it at 16, making it the show’s highest new entry to date. That track sold 109,000 downloads in its first week of release.
The Beatles’ 71 hits were in the charts between 1964 and 1996, while Glee’s first entry came in June 2009. In the contrary, the fab four have a tally of 617 weeks in the chart.
In the UK, Glee is broadcast on E4. The cast have scored 16 entries in the top 40 this year which includes a cover of Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’ that peaked at number 2 in January.