Backstreet Boys 'break record'

The Backstreet Boys won Best Group at the year's MTV Europe awards

The Backstreet Boys are claiming a world record for sales of their new album Black & Blue.

The group sold five million copies of the album around the world after it was released last week.

The boy band's US publicists, The Mitch Schneider Organisation, claim this is the highest worldwide first-week sale for any album.

It beat The Beatles' 1, which sold more than 500,000 worldwide in its first week.

In the US, it went to number one after selling 1.6m copies, ousting The Beatles' 1 compilation from the top spot.

But the US sales were less than the first week sales of albums by N'Sync, who sold 2.4 million, and Eminem (1.8 million) earlier this year.

Gold

Their last album, Millennium, sold 1.1 million copies in the US on its first week of release, a record at the time.

The Backstreet Boys are now the first act to sell more than one million US copies in the first week of release with two consecutive albums.

Black & Blue received a far quieter reception in the UK, entering Sunday's album chart at number 13. But it went gold, selling over 200,000 copies.

The album was launched in a whirlwind of publicity last week, with the five-piece - Nick Carter, Howie Dorough, Brian Littrell, AJ McLean and Kevin Richardson - embarking on a whistle-stop world tour.

Hundreds of fans and a tame cheetah greeted them in Cape Town, South Africa, while 10 fans were injured in a crush to see them at Narita airport in Tokyo.

The group have also announced a world tour which will see them tour North America from January, South America in April and Europe in June.