Adele claims Number 1 spot with record-breaking new single ‘Easy On Me’

Adele’s comeback single, ‘Easy On Me’, has reached the number one spot on the UK Official Singles Chart.

The track is Adele’s first release since her 2016 single ‘Water Under the Bridge’, taken from her 2015 album, ’25’. 

‘Easy On Me’ is the lead single from Adele’s highly anticipated upcoming album, ‘30’, which the singer has said she hopes will help her nine-year-old son understand her divorce from ex-husband Simon Konecki.

‘Easy On Me’ sold a huge 217,300 units in its first week, which is the highest number of sales in an opening week since Ed Sheeran’s 2017 single ‘Shape Of You’.

The single has also broken streaming records, with 24 million streams in the UK this week. The track has now overtaken Ariana Grande’s record of 16.9 million streams in January 2019 with her song, ‘7 Rings’.

Adele’s latest single has also seen the highest number of digital download sales in a week this year, with 23,500.

In the lead-up to the release of Adele’s next album, ‘30’, some of her previous releases have joined the Top 40 chart again, with ‘When We Were Young’ at number 25, and ‘Someone Like You’ at number 34. 

Her previous album, ‘25’, continues to climb the Official Albums Chart, reaching number three this week, and her albums ‘21’ and ‘19’ are now at number six and number 15 respectively.

‘Easy On Me’ is about Adele’s divorce from her ex-husband and how she made the decision to walk away in 2019. The lyrics “I changed who I was to put you both first/ But now I give up”describe her asking her son to understand why she made her decision.

The music video for ‘Easy On Me’ was directed by Xavier Dolan who has won a variety of awards at Cannes Film Festival. The director previously teamed up with Adele to direct the music video for her 2015 single ‘Hello’. The video for ‘Easy On Me’ pays homage to their previous project, and transitions from black and white to colour.