The 22-year-old Canadian set the charts alight last year, but when it comes to setting records rather than selling them he has some stiff competition.
How much Justin Bieber can the world take? A lot, apparently.
The 22-year-old Canadian pop star has just been unveiled as the holder of eight Guinness World Records, in news that has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the 2017 compendium is about to hit bookshelves in plenty of time to make its way into tweenage Christmas stockings around the world.
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The records that screaming Beliebers can eagerly begin reciting include:
- Most streamed track on Spotify in one week. What Do You Mean? was streamed 30,723,708 times from August 28, 2015.
- Most streamed album on Spotify in one week. The Bieb's fourth studio album, Purpose, was streamed 205 million times worldwide in the seven days after its November 13, 2015 release.
- Most simultaneous tracks on the US singles chart: As of December 2015, 17 of Justin's songs were scattered among Billboard's Hot 100.
- Most simultaneous new entries in the Hot 100 by a solo artist. In a testament to the meaninglessness of singles charts in the era of the digital download, 13 songs from Purpose sat in the Hot 100 as of December 5, 2015.
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- First act to occupy top three positions simultaneously on the UK singles chart, with Love Yourself at number one, Sorry at number two and What Do You Mean? in third spot on January 14, 2016.
- Most followers on Twitter (male). Guinness cites his number of followers as "85,235,563 and counting". As of Thursday, it's up to 87.1 million. And counting.
- Most viewed music channel on YouTube (individual). Guinness claims his VEVO channel has had 10,478,651,389 views. As of Thursday, the number is a whisker under 12.4 billion views.
- Most subscribers on YouTube for a musician (male). Guinness says 20,711,202 subscribers. YouTube says it's now almost 24 million.
You might think all this makes Justin Bieber the holder of some sort of world record for world records. But it doesn't.
Katy Perry has eight of these things, too, including:
- 92.3 million Twitter followers
- highest earnings for a female pop star ($135 million in 2015)
- first female (and only artist other than Michael Jackson) to have five number one US singles from the same album (Teenage Dreams)
- biggest selling digital artist (US), with 72 million digital single sales (as of 2014)
- largest TV audience for a Superbowl half-time performance
- most appearances by one artist in the Just Dance video game (11 songs)
- fastest time to complete 10 metres on hind legs by a dog (in the video for Dark Horse, pint-sized Pomeranian Jiff covered this distance in 6.56 seconds)
Yes. Seriously.
But enough of these paltry pop stars. Let's hear it for Ashrita Furman, the 61-year-old American who really does hold the world record for world records. He has set 551 of them since claiming his first in 1979 for doing 27,000 star jumps.
His other records include "most balloons burst by sitting in 30 seconds", "fastest mile on a pogo stick" and "most spoons twisted in one minute".
Truly amazing. Now excuse me while I go see how many eye rolls I can manage in 60 seconds.
Follow Karl Quinn on facebook at karlquinnjournalist or on twitter @karlkwin
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