As projected last week, Adele has accomplished an enormous feat with her ’21′ album. Astonishingly, in a time when massive record sales were considered a distant memory, the British Soul singer’s sophomore LP has topped the 9 million sales mark in the US.
Logging its 64th frame on the Billboard 200, ’21′ landed at #2 this week and sold another 101K copies. The record has sold over 9.09 million copies in the US since being released February 2011 and is the first album since Usher’s ‘Confessions’ to sell over 9 million units.
Remarkably, ’21′, which was the top-selling album of 2011, has thus far been the best-performing LP of 2012. In fact, with sales surpassing 3.27 million copies, it is the only release that has sold over 1 million units so far this year. How many promotional appearances did Adele make to support ’21′ in 2012? Only one performance of ‘Rolling in the Deep’ at the 2012 Grammy Awards.
See the leading releases in the top 10 of both Billboard 200 and the Hot 100 below:
1. Carrie Underwood - ’Blown Away’ – 120K (total: 387K)
2. Adele – ’21′ – 101K (total: 9.09 M)
3. Lionel Richie – ‘Tuskegee’ – 71K (total: 750K)
4. Various Artists – ‘Now 42′ – 65K (total: 160K)
5. Norah Jones - ‘Little Broken Hearts’ – 60K (total: 170K)
6. Silversun Pickups - ‘Neck of the Woods’ – 41K (debut)
7. One Direction – ‘Up All Night’ – 40K (total: 626K)
8. Jack White – ‘Blunderbuss’ – 34K (total: 228K)
9. Tank – ‘This Is How I Feel’ – 33K (debut)
10. Luke Bryan - ‘Tailgates & Tanlines’ – 26K (total: 129K)
1. Gotye’s – ‘Somebody That I Used to Know (Ft. Kimbra)’
3. Maroon 5 – ‘Payphone (Ft. Wiz Khalifa)’
2. fun. – ‘We are Young (Ft. Janelle Monae)’
4. Carly Rae Jepsen – ‘Call Me Maybe’
5. Flo Rida – ‘Wild Ones (Ft. Sia)’
6. Nicki Minaj – ‘Starships’
7. One Direction – ‘What Makes You Beautiful’
8. The Wanted – ‘Glad You Came’
9. Justin Bieber – ‘Boyrfriend’
10. Train – ‘Drive By’
Watch Adele’s ‘Rolling in the Deep’ Grammy performance below: