2011: Rebecca Ferguson set to out sell One Direction, Matt Cardle and Cher Lloyd

Last year’s X Factor runner-up Rebecca Ferguson was the last of finalist to released a debut album in 2011, but it looks as though the best might have been saved until last.

The young mother of two is on course to break X Factor record sales this year with her debut album ‘Heaven’. 

The album was launched this week and online retailer Amazon reported that in terms of pre-sales, she massively outsold series winner Matt Cardle and former finalist Cher Lloyd and even managed to shift slightly more copies of the record than One Direction did with their debut album.

Pre-sales of Rebecca’s ‘Heaven’ outperformed those of Matt Cardle’s ‘Letters’ by 181% and Cher Lloyd’s ‘Sticks and Stones’ by 571 per cent.

Paul Firth, head of music buying at Amazon.co.uk, think this is great news for whichever two acts fail towin this year’s X Factor series at the weekend, saying:

‘Over the past three years we’ve seen Rebecca Ferguson ahead of Matt Cardle, Olly Murs ahead of Joe McElderry and JLS ahead of Alexandra Burke in the charts, and with Rebecca Ferguson, Olly Murs, One Direction and JLS all with albums in the top 20 we’re sure that this weekend’s runners-up will be pleased to know that all’s not lost if they miss out on the coveted win.’