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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
Entertainment
Casey Cooper-Fiske

Sam Fender beats Taylor Swift to best-selling vinyl record of the year so far

Sam Fender’s People Watching has been named the best selling vinyl album of 2025 (Lesley Martin/PA) - (PA Archive)

Sam Fender has beaten Taylor Swift to see his People Watching album crowned the best-selling vinyl record of 2025 so far.

The 31-year-old’s third album, which was released in February this year, has sold 53,000 copies this year according to the Official Charts Company, beating Swift’s Lover (Live From Paris) (2023), which sold 46,800 vinyl copies in just one week in 2025 after a January reissue.

Fender saw the biggest opening release of his career with the album, which was also named the fastest-selling vinyl album of the century by a British artist when it sold 43,000 copies in its first seven days on sale.

Fender beat Taylor Swift to number one (Liam McBurney/PA) (PA Wire)

Lover (Live from Paris) became Swift’s 13th UK number one album back in February, overtaking Madonna to become the female artist with the most UK number one albums.

The rest of the top 10 was made up of Sabrina Carpenter’s Short ‘N’ Sweet (three), Lady Gaga’s Mayhem (four), Pulp’s More (five), Romance by Fontaines DC (six), Chappell Roan’s The Rise And Fall Of A Midwest Princess (seven), Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours (eight), Sleep Token’s Even In Arcadia (nine), and Oasis’s (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? (10).

Following Oasis’s return to the stage in Cardiff last week, their 1994 song Whatever has been named as the best selling single of 2025, after it saw a 30th anniversary reissue in February this year on pink and blue splatter vinyl.

Oasis topped the vinyl singles chart for the year so far (Jordan Pettitt/PA) (PA Wire)

After the re-release the song reached number one on the Official Vinyl Singles Chart for three weeks in March, and back into the Top 40 of the UK singles chart for the first time in nearly three decades.

The rest of the top five is made up of Taylor Swift and Post Malone’s Fortnight (two), Oasis’s Some Might Say (three), Guess by Charli XCX featuring Billie Eilish (four), and Sabrina Carpenter’s Manchild (five).

The top 10 was rounded off by Chappell Roan’s Pink Pony Club (six), Alok and Kylie Minogue’s Last Night I Dreamt I Fell In Love (seven), Lola Young’s Messy (eight), Fontaines DC’s It’s Amazing To Be Young (nine), and The Killers and Bruce Springsteen’s Encore At The Garden (10).

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