Robbie Williams equals Beatles’s record for most UK No 1 albums

Robbie Williams has equalled The Beatles’s record for most number one albums in the UK charts.

The Official Charts Company announced on Friday that the Angels singer, 50, had now matched one of the most influential bands of all time with 15 records topping the charts.

It comes after the release of Better Man, Williams’s latest offering and the soundtrack to his biopic, which has become his 15th album to reach number one.

The Beatles secured their 15th chart-topper in 2000 with Greatest Hits Album 1, more than 37 years after their debut studio album Please Please Me achieved the top spot.

Williams, who left boy band Take That in 1995 before embarking on a meteoric solo career, said it was a “huge honour”.

He said: “I’m so proud of the film Better Man, so to have the soundtrack album reach number one makes it even more special.”

The announcement follows a poor reception for Williams’s biopic in the US, where the film has made just $1.1 million (£881,000), despite a budget of $110 million (£89 million).

Depicting the artist’s rise to fame and the pitfalls and personal demons that it can bring, Williams is portrayed throughout as a CGI chimpanzee.

While it was well-received in the UK, the semi-biographical film was described by Variety as “tanking” with Americans.

Williams has previously lamented his lack of fame in the US, despite selling more than 75 million records worldwide, and recently said that Taylor Swift had no idea how famous he was when he joined the American singer on stage at Wembley in 2018.

He told SiriusXM Hits 1: “I think [she] knew the concept of a Robbie Williams somewhere in the world but I don’t think she knew anything about me.

“But when I came up through the stage and the audience erupted, you could just see this thing in her face go ‘Uh? Eh?’ and I’m like ‘Yeah, I’m the mayor of this here’.”

After the announcement of the new record reaching number one, Williams offered a “special thank you to all my fans, whose support I never take for granted”.

His other chart-toppers include Life Thru A Lens (1997), I’ve Been Expecting You (1998), Sing When You’re Winning (2000), Swing When You’re Winning (2001), Escapology (2002), Greatest Hits (2004), Intensive Care (2005) and Rudebox (2006). They are followed by In And Out Of Consciousness: Greatest Hits 1990-2010 (2010), Take The Crown (2012), Swings Both Ways (2013), The Heavy Entertainment Show (2016), The Christmas Present (2019) and XXV (2022).

Williams’s portrayal as a chimpanzee in Better Man, directed by The Greatest Showman’s Michael Gracey, is a comment on how the singer feels like a “performing monkey”.

The film, which received an Oscar nomination for best visual effects on Thursday, follows the Staffordshire-born singer’s childhood, time in Take That and his solo career.

The soundtrack for the film includes his hits Rock DJ, Angels, Let Me Entertain You and Better Man – as well as the Take That track Relight My Fire.