The Official Charts Company (OCC), which compiles the UK pop charts, has named Ed Sheeran as its artist of the decade.

The Suffolk singer-songwriter had the most No 1s across the albums and singles chart in the 2010s, with 12. His albums spent 41 weeks at the top in total, his singles 38, making a total of 79 weeks – more than any other artist. No other artist meanwhile has spent more time in the Top 40 singles chart than Sheeran’s combined 572 weeks.

Sheeran said: “This is nuts – I didn’t really expect to have a career past five years, so to be able to have done it for a decade, … Thank you for your support.” OCC chief executive Martin Talbot said Sheeran’s achievement was “truly remarkable”.

It’s the latest in a string of record-breaking stats for Sheeran, who staged the world’s highest-grossing tour ever this year – it earned £558m ($775m), overtaking a tally set by U2 in 2011.

With Sheeran currently in the Top 10 with his single South of the Border, he has become one of four artists to score more than 1,000 weeks in the UK Top 75. Only Elvis Presley, Cliff Richard and Rihanna have a higher tally than his 1,002 weeks.

His song Shape of You was named the biggest song of the decade, reaching 4.3m “combined sales” – the figure drawn from a combination of streams and downloads. Thinking Out Loud was at No 3 in the list, and Perfect at No 5 – in between were Mark Ronson’s Uptown Funk and Luis Fonsi’s Despacito.

Sheeran had to defer to Adele, though, in the list of the biggest albums of the decade. Her LPs 21 and 25 take the decade’s top two slots; Sheeran’s X and Divide arrive at three and four. Michael Bublé’s seasonal album Christmas rounds out the Top 5.