1

1 is a compilation album by The Beatles, released on 13 November 2000. The album features virtually every #1 British and American hit single by the band released from 1962 to 1970. Despite being released on the 30th anniversary of the band's breakup, it was their first compilation available on one Compact Disc. 1, as a project, was a critical success, and became a blockbuster phenomenon, becoming the biggest selling album of 2000 worldwide.

Remastering

1, all its 27 songs were available mainly in two remastered CD versions. The first was on the respective Beatles albums (all of them released in 1987 and on Past Masters, Volume One and Past Masters, Volume Two both from 1988. The second remastering was made available on the CD versions for The Beatles 1962-1966 and The Beatles 1967-1970 (released in 1993). According to the liner notes of the album, the original analogue masters were "digitally remastered at 24 bits resolution, processed using Sonic Solutions NoNoise technology and mastered to 16 bit using Prism SNS Noise Shaping." The remastering was overseen by Peter Mew of Abbey Road Studios and took place there.

Package

pop-art yellow number one on a background red. (The emphasis on the 1 icon was later used on many of the compilations of number-one hits by different artists that followed this album (for example, ELV1S: 30 #1 Hits by Elvis Presley or Number Ones by the Bee Gees). On its back cover, the album also included the famous photos of the Beatles taken by Richard Avedon copyrighted on 17 August 1967. The whole project uses exclusively different kinds of Helvetica typeface. 1 was released on mainly three formats—CD (on Apple 7243 5 29970 2), vinyl (Apple 529 3251) and cassette (529 9704). The CD includes a 32-page booklet with a coloured page with international picture covers (a total of 163 covers are displayed on the whole booklet) and details (recording date, location, release date, chart stats) for each of the singles. It also includes on its first two pages a collage with 27 1's in different colors (all of them following the same art as the cover) with the sentence "27 #1 singles 1" (which was used as a catchy phrase for the promo ads for the album), and the following foreword by George Martin. The LP and the cassette conserved the main art of the CD version, but on a different form. The double vinyl record version was not released in the U.S., where it was imported the British edition. The vinyl version features a large full-color fold-out poster showing 126 picture sleeves (37 less than on the CD), and reproductions of the four Richard Avedon photos. The Avedon portraits also appear on the inside of the gatefold cover. The records have custom labels featuring the same graphics as the front cover and are packaged in custom inner sleeves. The deluxe packaging of the vinyl album, with its four portraits and poster, is reminiscent to that of The Beatles. The cassette included a 20-page insert, including the collage, the George Martin commentary and paged Avelon's portraits on its inlay http://6tfwxa.bay.livefilestore.com/y1pibLBS1KgwhQ_Bni34mEG8u2m7ICYR8aZhIk4X7GKJRZXefgnK9WecQgXtlHh1i5aL3njEjU6Mi8/2000One_inlay.jpg and the whole de    scription for the tracks as a total of 36 covers on its inlay reverse http://6tfwxa.bay.livefilestore.com/y1pqK_HeZRDQ8d-H-bpU_JT1LR0auFGQTEjCBfo8Ikvnfy1DfFS8e0gZeQW0NWqX-uNqOjOMRUN2Wc/2000One_inlayrev.jpg

Sales and chart performance

1 surpassed all critical and commercial expectations. It broke a considerable number of sales and chart records. It sold 3.6 million units in its first week and more than 12 million in three weeks worldwide, reaching #1 in over 35 countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom. It became the fastest-selling album of all time and the highest-selling of 2000 and of the decade so far. This achievement made The Beatles the first and only artist to have the best-selling albums of two different decades (they had also the best-selling album of the 1960s, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band). It also became the second biggest selling compilation in history, after The Eagles's Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975. In the UK, 1 became the Beatles' 17th #1 album with sales of 319,126 copies (achieving record sales for only one week in 2000). On 18 December 2000, Ananova.com reported that the album has "become 2000's biggest-selling album—in only five weeks." The album "1" overtook Moby's Play at the weekend by breaking 1.3 million sales. It was at the number 1 in the UK chart for five consecutive weeks. It was also the first album to stay at the top spot for nine weeks in almost ten years (the last being the Eurythmics's Greatest Hits), the best-selling album of 2000, and the fourth best-selling album of the 2000s so far in the UK. In its eleventh week, 1 sold a total of two million copies in the UK. It spent a total of 46 weeks inside the Top 75. On 11 July 2003 it was certified 8× platinum by the BPI, for over 2.4 million copies sold in the UK. It is the 24th best-selling album in the UK, and the second best-selling Beatles album in that country (only beaten by Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which is the second best-selling album in the UK). In the U.S. the response was similar. It debuted at #1 with a sales over 595,000 copies. In its second week, sales increased to 662,000 but it was knocked off the top spot by Backstreet Boys's Black & Blue. , the album returned to the #1 spot the following 100 days, and spent a total of eight weeks at #1, selling over 1,258,667 copies during Christmas week (its highest-selling week.) With this number the Beatles achieved a new record: it was the seventh highest one-week sales in Soundscan history, and the highest for an album not in its first week. The album spent 104 weeks inside the Billboard 200 and became the sixth best-selling album in the United States in 2000, and at the end of 2007 was the ninth best-selling album in the Soundscan era (1991 onwards)with 11.1 million units soldReuters: 2007 U.S. Music Purchases Exceed 1.4 Billion. On 15 April 2005, 1 was certified Diamond in America (a total of 10,164,000 copies were scanned.) 1 is the 84th best-selling album in the U.S. In a press release, Apple Corps, the Beatles' company, stated that worldwide sales of 1 had exceeded 31 million copies worldwide, with 10 million of those sales being in the U.S.