List of best-selling singles of the 1950s in the United Kingdom

Singles are a type of music release that typically have fewer tracks than an extended play or album; during the 1950s, sales of singles in the United Kingdom were compiled by the magazine New Musical Express (NME), and published weekly as a record chart. The singles chart was founded in 1952 by Percy Dickins of the NME, who wanted to imitate the hit parade that featured in the American magazine Billboard; before this, the popularity of a song had been measured by its sales of sheet music.^[1] Dickins sampled twenty shops, asking which their ten biggest-selling singles were. His aggregated list of sales was then published in the NME on 14 November 1952 as a Top 12 chart.^[1] The NME's chart is considered by the Official Charts Company (OCC) to be the canonical UK Singles Chart during the 1950s;^[2] it was expanded to a Top 20 on 1 October 1954.^[3]

Bill Haley & His Comets had the biggest-selling single of the 1950s with "Rock Around the Clock", the first single in the UK to sell more than one million copies.

Sales of records significantly increased in the mid-fifties, following the birth of rock and roll. As a result, the top ten biggest-selling singles of the 1950s were all released in the latter half of the decade.^[4] The biggest-selling single of this period was "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley & His Comets, which became the first single ever to sell more than a million copies in the UK.^[5]

Singles

Best-selling singles of the 1950s in the UK

No.	Single	Artist	Record label[a]	Year[a]	Sales	Chart peak[a]
1	"Rock Around the Clock"	Bill Haley & His Comets	Brunswick	1955	1,390,000	1
2	"Diana"	Paul Anka	Columbia	1957	1,240,000	1
3	"Mary's Boy Child"	Harry Belafonte	RCA	1957	1,170,000	1
4	"What Do You Want to Make Those Eyes at Me For?"	Emile Ford & The Checkmates	Pye	1959	920,000	1
5	"Jailhouse Rock"	Elvis Presley	RCA	1958	880,000	1
6	"What Do You Want?"	Adam Faith	Parlophone	1959	820,000	1
7	"Living Doll"	Cliff Richard & The Drifters	Columbia	1959	770,000	1
8	"All Shook Up"	Elvis Presley	His Master's Voice	1957	740,000	1
9	"Love Letters in the Sand"	Pat Boone	London	1957	710,000	2
10	"It Doesn't Matter Anymore"	Buddy Holly	Coral	1959	680,000	1

1. The record labels, years and chart peaks are those given by the OCC.^[6]