There are far more records that the Beatles hold (and some more will eventually
be added here), but here is a fraction of those...
* The largest amount of record sales of any group: EMI
estimates them at OVER 1 BILLION discs and tapes sold worldwide.
* The most platinum albums: 13 in the US alone.
* The most no.1 singles: 22 in the US alone.
* The biggest first-week sales of a double-album: The Beatles Anthology
Vol. 1, with 855,473 copies sold in the US from Nov. 21-28 1995.
* The fastest selling single: "I Want To Hold Your Hand", with
250,000 copies sold within the first three days of its US release, one million after two weeks and a staggering 10,000
copies PER HOUR (!) in New York City alone after 20 days.
* The biggest advance orders for a single release: 2.1 million
copies of "Can't Buy Me Love" in the U.S..
* The biggest-selling single: "Hey Jude", with more than 8 million
copies in the U.K. and U.S. alone.
* The greatest volume of sales within a 12-month period: due to
the three Anthology double-albums, estimated to be 33 million in 1996/97.
* In the year 1996, the Beatles, in terms of sales-figures, managed to outsell... well,
themselves. They sold more albums in that year than they had in any one year during the 1960s.
* With the three Anthology records - Anthology 1, Anthology 2, and Anthology 3 - the Beatles
managed to make three consecutive #1 records in the same 12 months.
* The TV Anthology was viewed by 418 million people.
* Paul McCartney holds the record for the largest stadium crowd: 184,000 people at the
Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
* The Hot 100 charts in the USA in April 1964:
1. Can't Buy Me Love - The Beatles
2.
Twist and Shout - The Beatles
3. She Loves You - The Beatles
4. I Want To Hold Your
Hand - The Beatles
5. Please Please Me - The Beatles
... and Beatles songs at numbers 31,
41, 46, 58, 65, 68 and 79...
"When you get to the top, there is nowhere to go but down, but
the Beatles could not get down. There they remain, unreachable, frozen, fabulous."
- British poet Philip Larkin on
the Beatles, 1983
-- For more records, see The Guiness Book Of World Records --
