Achievements

Throughout their relatively short career, the Beatles set a number of world records— most of which have yet to be broken. The following is a partial list:





Albums

The Beatles are the best-selling musical group of all time, estimated by EMI to have over one billion discs and tapes sold worldwide.

The Beatles have notched up the most multi-platinum selling albums for any artist or musical group (thirteen in the U.S. alone).

The Beatles have a record six diamond-selling albums (10 million copies): Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles, Abbey Road, The Beatles: 1962-1966, The Beatles: 1967-1970, and The Beatles 1.

The Beatles have had more number one albums than any other group (19 in the U.S. and 15 in the United Kingdom).

The Beatles spent the highest number of weeks at number one in the albums chart (174 in the UK and 132 in the U.S.).

The most successful first week of sales for a double album (The Beatles Anthology Volume 1, which sold 855,473 copies in the U.S. from 21 November to 28 November 1995).

The Beatles have the fastest selling CD of all time with 1. It sold over 13 million copies in four weeks.

The Beatles were the youngest group to top the UK album charts with their debut album; however, McFly has since topped this record with their debut album in 2004.



Singles

The Beatles have had more number one singles than any other musical group (23 in Australia, 23 in The Netherlands, 22 in Canada, 21 in Norway, 20 in the U.S., and 18 in Sweden). Ironically, the Beatles could easily have had even more number ones, because they were often competing with their own singles. For example, the Beatles' Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever were released as a double A-sided single, which caused sales and airplay to be divided between the two songs instead of being counted collectively. Even so, they reached number two with the singles. They even managed to hold separate releases by themselves off the top of the British chart in 1967 with Hello Goodbye at number 1 and the Magical Mystery Tour E.P at number 2.

In terms of charting positions, Lennon and McCartney are the most successful songwriters in history, with 32 number one singles in the U.S. for McCartney, and 26 for Lennon (23 of which were written together). Lennon was responsible for 29 Number One singles in the UK, and McCartney was responsible for 28 (25 of which were written together).

During the week of 4 April 1964, The Beatles held the top five positions on the Billboard singles chart. No one had ever done anything like this before, and it is doubtful that the conditions will ever exist for anyone to do it again. The songs were Can't Buy Me Love, Twist and Shout, She Loves You, I Want to Hold Your Hand, and Please Please Me.

The next week, 11 April 1964, the Beatles held fourteen positions on the Billboard Hot 100. Before the Beatles, the highest number of concurrent singles by one artist on the Hot 100 was nine (by Elvis Presley, 19 December 1956).

The Beatles are the only artist to have 'back-to-back-to-back' number one singles on Billboard's Hot 100 in the modern chart era. Their Can't Buy Me Love single supplanted She Loves You, which had in turn taken the #1 spot from I Want to Hold Your Hand. Boyz II Men, Nelly and Outkast have directly succeeded themselves atop the chart, but the Beatles are the only artist to 'three-peat'. (In 2004, Usher came within a week of matching this feat, with three of his singles (Yeah! Burn and Confessions) holding the top spot for 21 of 22 weeks; only a one-week interruption between Burns 7th and 8th weeks atop the chart by American Idol singer Fantasia broke the streak. Billboard's current version of the Hot 100 chart is considered to have begun in August 1958; before that, artists such as Elvis Presley, Glenn Miller, Jimmy Dorsey, and Bing Crosby had also had three consecutive #1 hits, but on earlier Billboard charts that preceded the Hot 100.)

The Beatles' Yesterday is the most covered song in history, appearing in the Guinness Book of Records with over three thousand recorded versions. It is also the most played song in the history of international radio.

The Beatles had the fastest selling single of all time with I Want to Hold Your Hand. The song sold 250,000 units within three days in the U.S., one million in 2 weeks. (Additionally, it sold 10,000 copies per hour in New York City alone for the first 20 days.)

The largest number of advance orders for a single, at 2.1 million copies in the U.S. for Can't Buy Me Love (it sold 940,225 copies on its first day of release in the U.S. alone).

The Beatles appear five times in the top 100 best-selling singles in the UK. No other group appears more than twice.



Performances

With their performance at Shea Stadium in 1965, The Beatles set new world records for concert attendance (55,600) and revenue. This was the first time in the history of popular music anyone had played in a proper stadium as opposed to a theatre or concert hall.

The Beatles broke television ratings records in the U.S. with their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show with over 70 million people viewing. Crime reportedly fell by a third during the duration of the transmission, although this eventually turned out to be false.

On 30 June 1966, the Beatles became the first musical group to perform at the Nippon Budokan Hall in Tokyo. They performed five times in three days gathering audiences of about 10,000 per performance.