Following yesterday’s reveal of the latest official music charts in the United Kingdom, we discovered that this year’s official Eurovision compilation album had charted at #2 in the Official UK Compilations Chart. What’s more, this makes this year’s compilation the highest-charting Eurovision compilation of all-time!
Time for some statistics!
We’ve looked back in the UK Official Charts Archive to discover at what position each Eurovision compilation album peaked at in the Official UK Compilations Chart since autumn 2005 when an online record of each chart began being published.
Whilst a Compilations Chart has existed since the late 1980s, an online record of the chart is only visible as of autumn 2005. Nevertheless, due to the trajectory of the peak positions you see below, it is safe to presume that the oldest Eurovision compilation albums from 2000 to 2005 did not reach the highs of #2. Take a look at our findings below:
| Compilation album | UK Peak Position |
| Athens 2006 | 17 |
| Helsinki 2007 | 16 |
| Belgrade 2008 | 20 |
| Moscow 2009 | 14 |
| Oslo 2010 | 11 |
| Düsseldorf 2011 | 5 |
| Baku 2012 | 9 |
| Malmö 2013 | 10 |
| Copenhagen 2014 | 8 |
| Vienna 2015 | 11 |
| Stockholm 2016 | 9 |
| Kyiv 2017 | 7 |
| Lisbon 2018 | 4 |
| Tel Aviv 2019 | 3 |
| 2020 Tribute Album | 2 |
A fantastic sign for the contest
As you can see, in recent years the official compilation has gained increased popularity in the United Kingdom. Nevertheless, this year’s peak position of #2 is the highest ever for a Eurovision album in the UK Compilations Chart as of 2005. In case you were wondering, NOW! 105 is the album responsible for denying the 2020 Eurovision album the top spot.
It could be argued that the album being released a day prior to the liveshow may have benefited the album’s chart position this year as all sales will have counted towards the same week. Usually, the album gets released a few weeks prior to the live shows meaning sales from hardcore fans, who buy the album first week, and casual fans, who buy the album following the live shows, get split between multiple weeks thus lowering its peak.
In addition, the coronavirus pandemic has resulted in less albums being released. Thus, this creates less competition for the Eurovision album in the charts. Nevertheless, its a great achievement for the Eurovision Song Contest to achieve its highest-peaking compilation to date in the United Kingdom and a symbol of the contest’s never-ending popularity!
Love, with a capital L! Eurovision. The idea of joining our fragmented world, through the medium of music/song is wonderful! I have all the competition CDs that have been released, and am only sad that all albums, from all the competitions, are not available. As the early comps only had a few entry\’s, maybe two years songs, could be on one double cd. Please! Someone consider releasing them. There have been so many lovely songs in the competition over the years which haven\’t had a physical release. Let\’s get a petition up to have them released! 😸