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Elton John with his award for No 1 single Cold Heart.
Elton John with his award for No 1 single Cold Heart. Photograph: Rocket Entertainment
Elton John with his award for No 1 single Cold Heart. Photograph: Rocket Entertainment

Elton John scores first No 1 single in 16 years, ending 15-week Ed Sheeran run

This article is more than 2 years old

Cold Heart, a collaboration with Dua Lipa and producers Pnau, tops chart in same week as hip replacement surgery for 74-year-old

Elton John has scored his first No 1 single in 16 years, in the same week he underwent a successful hip replacement.

The 74-year-old tops the UK chart with Cold Heart, a collaboration with Dua Lipa remixed by Pnau, in which a string of classic Elton songs – Sacrifice, Kiss the Bride, Where’s the Shoorah and Rocket Man – are finessed into a new disco-pop track.

It is Elton’s eighth No 1 (and Lipa’s third). His previous chart-topper was 2005’s Ghetto Gospel, a posthumous 2Pac track produced by Eminem that samples Elton’s song Indian Sunset. Earlier this week, the Official Charts Company confirmed that Cold Heart’s success made Elton the first solo artist to have Top 10 hits in six decades.

He knocks Ed Sheeran off the top, who has spent the last 15 weeks at No 1 with his singles Bad Habits (11 weeks) and Shivers (four weeks). The two singers recently announced they have teamed up for a Christmas song that will be released later this year.

Tyneside singer-songwriter Sam Fender goes straight to No 1 in the album chart following the release of his acclaimed second LP Seventeen Going Under, which outsold the rest of the Top 10 combined.

James Blake’s fifth album Friends That Break Your Heart earns him his highest ever placing at No 4. Ahead of huge anticipation for Adele’s new album 30, officially announced this week and scheduled for 19 November, her most recent album 25 rises to No 6.

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