Harry Styles has ended Ed Sheeran’s reign at the top of the UK Charts.
The former One Direction singer has managed to score himself his first number one hit as a solo artist with his debut single ‘Sign of the Times’ which was released last week, as it climbed to the top of the UK Singles Chart on Friday (14.04.17).
According to the Official Charts Company, the 23-year-old singer’s track managed to rack up 40,000 downloads and 3.5 million streams in the week after its release, beating the number two track – Ed Sheeran’s ‘Shape of You’ – by just 3,000 copies. Harry’s chart-topping single brings and end to the 13-week run that 26-year-old Ed has had at the top spot, with ‘Shape of You’ slipping down from number one to number two, and pushing next single ‘Galway Girl’ down to third.
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And Harry’s victory comes after it was recently reported he could have faced a tight race to the finish line after a glitch on Spotify’s search engine made it impossible for users to stream his track on the day of its release. A source said at the time: “This is a nightmare start for Harry’s solo career and his record label won’t be happy.
“The Spotify malfunction meant many of his fans simply couldn’t find his song to listen to online when they searched for it. The potential ramifications are big and it’s likely he has missed out on hundreds of thousands of streams as a result. That could really affect his chart position come Friday. He is Number One at the moment but that’s only because his streaming stats haven’t been included yet, and they have more weight. Harry’s launch is one of the industry’s biggest this year and everyone expected him to hit the ground running by topping the charts.”
