Adele returns to number one in the UK with huge figures for Easy On Me

Adele has returned to number one in the UK with the highest ranking figures for nearly five years.

Her new single Easy On Me recorded a record 24 million UK streams in the first week and 23,500 downloads.

Using the Official Charts Company formula, this equates to 217,300 sales, the highest since Ed Sheeran’s Shape of You in January 2017.

Easy On Me is the first track of the highly anticipated fourth album by the singer 30, which will be released next month.

The pop superstar recently told Vogue magazine that the album was recorded to help her eight-year-old son understand why she and her father got divorced.

Explaining the lyrics of the first single, in which she sings “Go easy on me …”, Adele said: “It’s not like anyone is trying, but it’s like I’ve left the marriage. Be nice to me as well.

“It was the first song I wrote for the album and then I didn’t write anything else for six months after that because I was like, ‘OK, well, I said it all.’

The song is her third number one in the UK, following Someone Like You in 2011 and Hello in 2016.

On the album chart, Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres has become the best-selling record of the year so far, with 101,000 sales on the chart.

It is Coldplay’s ninth straight album at number one in the UK. Meanwhile, My Universe, their collaboration with South Korean boy band BTS, has climbed 10 spots to fifth on the singles chart.

Coldplay recently told the BBC that their next tour will be partly powered by a dance floor that generates electricity when fans jump up and down and pedal around the premises.