The official top 40 biggest songs of 2022 (2023)

Harry Styles has claimed the title of officially the biggest British song of 2022 with As It Was, the Official Charts Company can confirm today.

The lead single from Harry's third solo album, Harry's House, has shifted 1.57 million chart positions since its release in April 2022 by the end of the year. As It Was is also the longest-running UK number 1 in 2022.managed an epic 10 weeks at the top of the official single charts. The synth-pop track became Harry's second UK chart-topping song, following 2017's debut single Sign Of The Times.

As It Was is also the most streamed song of the year with a total of over 180.9 million audio and video streams and the best selling song of the year with 65,000 copies sold.

Harry leads an all-British take on the top 10 biggest tracks of the year in the UK, marking the first time ever that all ten of the year's biggest hit singles were released or performed by British artists - including Harry, Cat Burns, Scottish DJs LF SYSTEM, Sam Fender, Glass Animals and Kate Bush. It's the first time British music has been swept so clean since the music industry began posting year-end sales charts more than 50 years ago.

For the full history of Harry Styles' official charts, click here.

2022 also continued the growth of streaming as the dominant way UK music fans consume their favorite songs and artists. The BPI calculates that by 2022, an average of more than 3 billion audio streams will be generated each week, compared to around 1.3 billion each week five years earlier.

The UK audio streaming market has grown to meet this demand - doubling from 68.1 billion to 159.3 billion audio streams and last year was over 40 times larger than 2012 (3.7 billion audio streams). It now takes an average of 1.3 million audio streams to break into the top 40 of the Official Singles Chart and a total of 7 million audio and video streams to chart a UK number 1 single.

In second place is Ed Sheeran with the biggest song of 2021, Bad Habits, which engulfed 1.18 million chart entries in 2022, proving Ed's reach is as dynamic and powerful as ever. That year Ed also broke a major record on the official charts -First artist ever to have four albums in the top 10 of the official albums chart for a year or more.

To round out the top 5 we have Ed once again, this time teaming up with Afrobeats superstar Fireboy DML on Peru (3), Breakout BRITs Rising Star nominee Cat Burns with her No. 2 single Go (4) and Ed's third entry, the dazzling former #1 single Shivers (5).

2022 was also the year of an extraordinary renaissance for one of Britain's biggest pop stars. Kate Bush reaped the rewards of a cleverly placed dubbing of her 1985 single Running Up That Hill (6) in the fourth season of the seminal Netflix series Stranger Things. The song resonated with a new generation35 years after its initial release, it (finally) reached #1 in the UK, breaking a trio of official chart records in the process.

The extraordinary story of Running Up That Hill's renaissance and UK chart history

Also earning a spot in the 2022 Top 10 are Glass Animals' TikTok anthem Heat Waves (7), Lost Frequencies and Calum Scott's slow-burning hit Where Are You Now (8), LF SYSTEM's #1 breakthrough Afraid To Feel (9 ). ) and Sam Fender's first UK Top 10 single Seventeen Going Under (10).

The Encanto line-up makes two of the Top 40, with their record-breaking #1 hit We Don't Talk About Bruno charting at #11 and Surface Pressure charting at #39.

Other 2022 chart-toppers set to make the year-end list include Dave's Starlight (14), Gayle's abcdefu (17), Sam Smith & Kim Petras' Unholy (31), and Lewis Capaldi's Forget Me (40).

The fastest selling singles of 2022

As It Was also claims another title this year - the biggest first week for a UK single in 2022. In its first seven days, As It Was has surpassed 94,000 chart units, more than any other title this year.

As for the fastest seller in their first week based on pure sales, that honor goes to themLadBaby's Record-Breaking Official Christmas Number 1, Food Aid. The charity track was copied a total of over 59,000 times in its first week, also becoming the most downloaded song of the year.

Breakout-Hits

Although Cat Burns originally released her single Go in 2020, two years later, Cat Burns enjoyed the most extraordinary year of breakthrough when the track peaked at #2 on the official singles chart, and Catbeing nominated for the BRITs Rising Star Awardand fourth place in the BBC Sound Of... 2023 poll.

The dance music was also on a grand scale this year,Led by two up-and-coming UK acts who achieved their first UK number 1 singles; Afraid To Feel (9) by LF SYSTEM and B.O.T.A (Baddest Of Them All) (24) by Eliza Rose & Interplanetary Criminal are among the two biggest hits of the year.

Other major dance releases include Irish duo Belters Only's Make Me Feel Good ft. Jazzy (12), Where Did You Go by Jax Jons ft. MNEK (16), Australian DJ Luude's hit Down Under with Colin Hay (23) and I'm Good (Blue) by David Guetta & Bebe Rexha (25), which spent a week at No. 1 and made Bebe her first chart-topping UK hit.

MORE:Official chart artists for 2023

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©2023Official Charts Company.All rights reserved.
Compiled from physical and digital sales combined with streaming numbers.

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©2023Official Charts Company.All rights reserved.
Compiled with audio and video streams.

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©2023Official Charts Company.All rights reserved.
Compiled with physical and digital download sales only.