Best-selling physical single since charts began

“Something About the Way You Look Tonight”/“Candle in the Wind 1997” by Elton John (UK, b. Reginald Dwight) has amassed worldwide sales of 33 million copies, making it the best-selling physical single since the UK’s Official Singles Chart and the US Billboard Hot 100 were first published, on 14 November 1952 and 4 August 1958, respectively. Issued as a double A-side following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales on 31 August 1997, “Something About the Way You Look Tonight” (from Elton’s studio album The Big Picture, released as a separate single just five days previously) and “Candle in the Wind 1997” (a re-written and re-recorded version of his hit from 1974) debuted at No.1 on charts around the world and has been certified 11x multi-platinum in the USA – for sales of 11 million – and 9x multi-platinum in the UK – for sales of 4.9 million. The single also went multi-platinum in Germany (4.5 million), France (2 million), Canada (1.9 million), Australia (980,000) and Japan (800,000), among other countries. All proceeds and royalties were donated to the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund.

Festive favourite “White Christmas” by Bing Crosby (USA, 1903–77), originally recorded and released in 1942 and re-recorded in 1947, is considered to be the best-selling physical single of all time with an estimated 50 million copies sold – including many millions in the decade before the first UK singles chart was published and 16 years before the arrival of the first Billboard Hot 100. The lack of available data from the 1940s and the early-mid 1950s makes it impossible to verify the song’s early sales performance, although it was reported in The Book of Golden Discs (Joseph Murrells, 1978) that it had reached the landmark of 30 million sales worldwide by 1968.