Anthony Callea is sitting at number one on this week’s ARIA Charts but in doing so he’s also broken a record, making the top position somewhat bittersweet.
As Tonedeaf report, Callea’s fifth record Backbone is now the lowest selling album to debut at number one ever, shifting just 2,950 copies last week.
The album is a covers record which sees the former Australian Idol runner-up take on tracks by TLC, Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson and it beat albums by Usher, Nick Cave and Remi to the top spot.
Despite being the lowest selling album to debut at number one ever, Callea doesn’t have the lowest selling number one ever.
Disturbed hold that title for their record Immortalized which claimed the top spot last year, selling just 2,140 units. This, however, was after a number of weeks of being in the charts and it had already debuted a number one with sales of 8,242 when it entered the charts.
Callea overtook Bring Me The Horizon to claim his title. Back in 2010, they sold 3,600 units of There Is a Hell… to make it to number one.
Interestingly, Callea is currently outside the top 50 on Apple Music’s streaming charts in Australia, suggesting that he’s more popular with physical buyers.
Unlike the UK and the US, ARIA currently doesn’t take streaming figures into consideration when compiling the charts. If they did, perhaps the sales would look a little healthier and/or we’d have a different number one.
Listen: Anthony Callea – Man In The Mirror
