Glee Cast Beats The Beatles' Billboard Chart Record

It wasn't a matter of if, it was a matter of when, and now it's happened --  the cast of the hit Fox show Glee has now officially scored more chart singles on the Billboard Hot 100 than the Beatles.  With the simultaneous chart debut of six new Glee singles from the episode that aired last week, the show's cast has now notched 75 entries, surpassing the Beatles' 71.

That means the Glee cast now holds the record for the most charted singles ever by a non-solo act.  Of course, it's worth noting that the Glee cast's entries are covers of existing songs, while the Beatles' entries are almost entirely original compositions.  Among solo acts, Elvis Presley is still the King, with 108 total chart entries.

It took the Beatles from 1964 to 1996 to amass their 71 chart entries.  The Glee cast did it in just one year, four months and two weeks.  That's because every week the show has been on, the five or six songs featured in each episode sell enough downloads to debut on the chart.   Since the show began, the cast's singles have sold 11.5 million downloads, according to Nielsen Soundscan.  The best-seller is their version of Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'."

Read up on this season of Glee, plus get recaps, songs and more.

To see what kind of company the Glee kids are in, here's a list of the artists with the most singles on the Billboard Hot 100 in the past 52 years:

108 singles: Elvis Presley
91: James Brown
75: Glee cast
74: Ray Charles
73: Aretha Franklin
71: The Beatles
67:, Elton John
64: Lil Wayne
63:, Stevie Wonder
61: Jay-Z

                
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