Take That's These Days earns band 12th No 1 in UK singles chart

Take That have bounded back to the top of the UK singles chart, scoring their 12th No 1 without any help from two of their co-founders. These Days is the first time the boyband have topped the chart without Jason Orange or Robbie Williams, who left the group after 2010’s Progress.

“We cannot believe it, we’re really made-up and we can’t thank everybody enough,” the now-trio told the Official Charts Company. These Days is the lead single from III, Take That’s forthcoming seventh studio album. Despite the fact that Progress marked Williams’ much anticipated return to the group, These Days has already surpassed all the singles on that album.

Band Aid 30, the Ebola benefit single finished at No 2, just 2,500 sales behind Take That’s new song. Olly Murs’s Wrapped Up and Ed Sheeran’s Thinking Out Loud remained steady at No 3 and No 4, followed by Clean Bandit’s Real Love, which fell three spots to No 5.

On the albums chart, Murs’ fourth studio LP landed commandingly at No 1, outselling Ed Sheeran by about 20,000 copies. It’s Murs’ third No 1 album. Yet the English singer’s triumph only comes courtesy of the Official Charts Company’s format rules. Over on the official compilation albums chart, Now That’s What I Call Music! 89 sold more than three times as many copies this week as Murs’s Never Been Better. This compilation and its July forebear, Now That’s What I Call Music! 88, are by far the fastest-selling albums of 2014, having thundered past the top studio LP, Sheeran’s X.

Elsewhere on the album chart, One Direction’s Four slips two places to No 3, followed by Sam Smith’s In the Lonely Hour and Pink Floyd’s The Endless River. At No 6, David Guetta’s singles-stuffed sixth LP is his lowest-charting album since 2007, and Susan Boyle’s Hope, her sixth album, marks the Scottish singer’s first debut outside of the top 10.