This is a list of the number one hits in the UK Albums Chart, from its inception in 1956 to the present.
[1] For its first few years the chart was usually topped by a musical soundtrack or original cast recording, but rock albums steadily gained ground.
Rock was dominant after the release of The Beatles first LP, Please Please Me, in 1963, except for the two-and-a-half-year spell later in the 1960s when the soundtrack of The Sound of Music went to the top of the charts repeatedly.
[2] A fairly distant second place is held by The Sound of Music soundtrack with a cumulative total of 70 weeks.
Fourth is the highest non soundtrack Bridge over Troubled Water by Simon and Garfunkel with a cumulative total of 33 weeks.