[attach id=250714 size="medium"]Emile Sandé’s album Our Version of Events hit its 63rd week in the top 10 of the UK album charts.[/attach]
Scottish singer-songwriter Emeli Sandé scored a new chart record on Sunday with her debut album after a stellar year in Britain that has paved the way for her next challenge – the US market.
Sandé smashed a record held for nearly 50 years by The Beatles when her debut album, Our Version of Events, hit its 63rd week in the top 10 of the UK album charts, according to the Official Charts Company.
The Beatles previously held the record for the debut album spending the most consecutive weeks in the top 10, with Please Please Me racking up 62 weeks in 1963 and 1964.
“It feels quite surreal to even have your name mentioned in the same sentence as The Beatles,” Sandé , 26, said. “For a record to stay there for so long it means people have connected with it, so that’s how I’m enjoying this record.”
It feels quite surreal to even have your name mentioned in the same sentence as The Beatles
The release of Our Version of Events in February 2012 kicked off a year of successes for Sandé , who sang at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2012 London Olympics and won best British female artiste and best album at the Brit Awards.
Sandé also notched up three number-one singles in the UK with Read All About It with Professor Green, Next to Me, and Beneath Your Beautiful, a collaboration with Labrinth.
Now, the former medical student has set herself a new challenge: tackling the US market, where she has yet to make a name for herself. Her single Next to Me is currently 46th in the Billboard Hot 100 chart and she is in the US this month to promote her album.
“I’m really excited about taking music over to the States because it’s a brand-new challenge,” she said.
“There are different formats over there so you have to understand the market, the people.
“You really have to take into account how massive the place is... It’s a brand-new adventure and it’s chapter two of this whole big thing.”
Sandé is the first to admit that the past year has been extraordinary, but she is aware that she needs to keep building from her debut album that was Britain’s best-seller last year. “So many things I’ve dreamed of doing have happened last year, which is amazing, but you always want to be better as a musician,” she said.
“The biggest thing for me right now is creating a second record that I love.”
So does the success mean that she has abandoned her plan to go back and finish the medicine degree that she shelved in its fourth year?
“Would I go back? I’d like to and every time I see programmes on medicine I’m tempted to go back to it because I do miss it a lot and I miss science and learning,
“But in the near future, no. I think I’d miss music too much,” she said.