The following is a really, really long post - so do skip over if you're not interested...
Adele's "21": A Tribute Post by Phoenix83
On 24th January 2011, Adele released 21 in most countries of the world (the release date was around a month later in the US and Canada).
Little was anyone to know it at the time, but the album would go on to become probably the most dominant in history.
UK
In Adele's homeland, here are the salient chart stats:
23 wks @ No 1
61 wks in top 5
76 wks in top 10
This made the album the longest-running solo No 1 album in history (surpassing Elvis Presley's GI Blues with 22 wks) and its 76 weeks in the top 10 equalled Michael Jackson's Thriller on its original release. Only one artist album in UK history - Simon and Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water - can claim to have had a more impressive chart run, in terms of weeks at No 1/ top 5/ top 10.
In sales terms, 21 also rewrote the record books by selling 100k+ copies week after week in 2011. Its sales in 2011 were so extraordinary that, by the end of that year, a mere 11 months after release, it was already the bestselling album in the UK in the 21st century (overtaking Amy Winehouse's Back To Black).
As evidenced by its stellar chart run, it continued to sell very well into 2012, and eventually passed the following sales milestones. Bear in mind these are some of the most iconic albums of all time, which were all in their own right cultural phenomena (most worldwide, but at least in the UK);
- in late February, 21 outsold Michael Jackson's Bad and passed 4m UK sales. (Bad was for many years MJ's bestselling album in the UK and was for many years the UK's fastest-selling album)
- in mid March, 21 outsold Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon (4.12m UK sales). As all music/chart fans will know, DSOTM was not only a huge seller on release, but has continued to be a major catalogue seller for several decades.
- in late March, 21 outsold Dire Straits' Brothers In Arms (4.16m UK sales). Brothers In Arms was the UK's bestselling album of the 1980s and was a cultural phenomenon due to it being the first readily available CD album.
- in early May, 21 outsold Michael Jackson's Thriller (4.27m UK sales). Say no more.
By breaking into the UK all-time top 5, 21 was now in rare company. I'm going to be generous for the sake of this post and assume that Sgt Pepper's UK sales are accurate. Nevertheless, it remains the case that it, along with Queen and Abba's greatest hits, did not achieve all their UK sales in a single release, in 'one blow', so to speak. They achieved large sales on several different occasions when they were re-issued for anniversaries, different formats (CDs), openings of musicals/films, and within collections such as the Platinum Collection.
This is not to denigrate these albums, but it is to state that they are excluded from being the UK's most dominant/ubiquitous album of all time, if we take 'dominance' to mean a large percentage of the UK population all buying a particular album in a short period of time.
Which brings us to this...
Quote:
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Originally posted by Spoffle
According to the Official Charts Company’s sales data, Adele’s 21 has overtaken Oasis’ (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? to become the UK’s fourth biggest selling album of all-time.
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Morning Glory was a comparable album to 21 in the UK, in that it held sway over the entire country for a few years. To appreciate what it means to outsell Morning Glory in the UK, read this;
http://www.epinions.com/review/musc_...363-prod4?sb=1
or consider this quote from NME;
Quote:
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From the knockout one-two of ‘Wonderwall’ and ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’, through the haunted strum of ‘Cast No Shadow’, right up to the lapping tide of ‘Champagne Supernova’, these are unofficial national anthems that soundtracked a generation’s coming-of-age. In fact, I’ll stick my neck out and argue it’s the last time that an album – or a band – truly changed British culture.
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Also consider that Morning Glory was voted the favourite British album of the past 30 years at the Brit Awards in 2010.
I won't go too much into personal anecdotes here but suffice to say I was a teenager when this album was first out in the UK and I remember the hysteria, media saturation of Oasis vs. Blur, mass applications for Knebworth tickets, and so on.
Anyway: I know some of you think I'm straying way off the 'Chart Analysis' topic here. But my nostalgic ramblings have a point, which is this:
By outselling "(What's The Story) Morning Glory?", "21" becomes the biggest selling album in UK history without a re-release and the most dominant album in UK history.
This alone is amazing. But now it's time to consider what 21 has done throughout the world;
US
21 was released in the US in February 2011 and went straight to No 1. This was a great breakthrough for Adele - not all British artists, successful as they are in their homeland, can ever hope to make it in the States.
But the album just kept on selling, spending its first 39 consecutive weeks in the top 5 (breaking the record of 38 consecutive weeks from debut set by Michael Jackson's Bad) and ending up as the bestseller of 2011 in the US. It thus became the first album by a UK artist since the Spice Girls' Spice to top the year-end US chart.
Impressive stuff already. But it was the continued dominance into 2012 which really set 21 apart, not just from other albums by UK artists but from - with one exception - every other artist album ever released in the US.
By the end of 2012, 21 has racked up the following chart stats in the US;
24 wks @ No 1
48 wks in the top 2
63 wks in the top 3
68 wks in the top 5
80 wks in the top 10
And here are the artist albums in US chart history which have ever spent more weeks...
at No 1
37 - Thriller, Michael Jackson
31 - Calypso, Harry Belafonte
31 - Rumours, Fleetwood Mac
in the top 2
54 - Thriller, Michael Jackson
in the top 3
none - Thriller is equal with 63 wks
in the top 5
71 - Thriller, Michael Jackson
in the top 10
84 - Born In The USA, Bruce Springsteen
Looking at the above stats, and considering that 21 repeated as the US' bestseller in 2012, only the second artist album ever to do so, it's a reasonable statement to make that:
21 is second only to Thriller as the most dominant artist album of all time on the US charts.
Of course there are a multitude of other US chart and sales feats which are worth noting in terms of Adele and 21;
- 10m sales, the first album to achieve this since Usher's Confessions, and thus, the first to do so in the digital era. This can be considered equivalent, in my opinion, to 20m sales in the record-buying era.
- In the chart week after the 2012 Grammies, Adele had 3 of the top 7 singles, and 2 of the top 4 albums, on the US charts.
This is the 2nd greatest chart domination ever shown on the US Hot 100 and BB200 - after the Beatles in 1964 who had all top 5 singles and both top 2 albums. Bear in mind also that the Beatles released a swarm of records at once into the US market, whereas two of Adele's singles and one of the albums were (at least) a year old.
- 21 is the longest-running No 1 album ever by a woman, and by a (fully) UK artist.
- 21 is the first album in BB200 history to have three of its singles concurrently No 1 with it.
- Adele's six Grammies in a single night ties the highest total for a woman. She is also only the second artist to win the Big Four Grammies (Song/Record/Album of the Year, Best New Artist).
- Rolling In The Deep is the biggest crossover hit in the last 25 years of the US charts, appearing on 12 different airplay genres.
- Someone Like You is the first 'piano + vocals only' song ever to top the US charts.
And although this is not an officially recognised record, as it's taking the achievements from two charts, I would like to just point out again that 21 has spent longer at No 1 in the US and UK than any artist album in history - and among such worthy competition....
47 wks - 21, Adele (24 US, 23 UK)
45 wks - Thriller, Michael Jackson (37 US, 8 UK)
43 wks - Bridge Over Troubled Water, Simon & Garfunkel (33 UK, 10 US)
42 wks - Saturday Night Fever, Bee Gees/Soundtrack (24 US, 18 UK)
42 wks - Sgt Pepper, Beatles (27 UK, 15 US)
Given all the above, plus 21's longer stay in the top 5/top 10/top 20 than Thriller - as shown in my previous stats, I think it is a fair claim that:
21 is the most dominant transatlantic artist album of all time.
If you thought the story ends there however, you'd be wrong. Here are just a few of the other records which 21 has set in countries throughout the globe;
Canada
- Longest-running No 1 album of all time. (The previous record was held by Supertramp's Breakfast In America)
- Bestselling album two years in a row (2011 and 2012)
Australia
- Longest-running No 1 album by a solo artist of all time. (The previous record was held by Delta Goodrem's Innocent Eyes)
- Most consecutive weeks in the top ten. (The previous record was held by Pink's I'm Not Dead)
- First album to reach 1m sales since Innocent Eyes (released 2003) - and thus the first to do so in the digital era. Only around 10 ten albums in Australian history have achieved this milestone, the others all in the mass record-buying era.
New Zealand
- Longest-running No 1 album of all time. (The previous record was held by Shania Twain's Come On Over)
- Most weeks in the top ten by an album all time.
- Bestselling album for two years in a row (2011 and 2012)
Ireland
- Longest-running No 1 album of all time.
Netherlands
- Longest-running No 1 album of all time.
- Most consecutive weeks in the top ten by an album all time.
(The previous record for both were held by Caro Emerald's Deleted Scenes...)
- Bestselling album for two years in a row (2011 and 2012); in 2012, the 2nd bestselling album was Adele's Live At The Royal Albert Hall.
Belgium - Flanders
- Longest-running No 1 album of all time.
- Bestselling album two years in a row (2011 and 2012)
Belgium - Wallonia
- Bestselling album two years in a row (2011 and 2012)
France
France is a difficult market for English-speaking artists to break. Its biggest-selling album of all time is by Celine Dion, but she had to sing in French to achieve those sales.
"21" spent a total of 21 weeks at No 1 in France, thus becoming
the longest-running No 1 album by a soloist singing in English ever. (The only English language albums to have been No 1 longer were Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and Supertramp's Breakfast In America).
It was also the bestselling album in France two years in a row (2011 and 2012).
It also had the longest consecutive run in the top ten ever.
Germany
- Longest-running top ten album by a solo artist ever.
- Bestselling album of 2011.
Switzerland
- Longest-running top ten album ever.
- Bestselling album of 2011.
Other countries where 21 hit No 1:
- Argentina
- Austria
- Brazil
- Croatia
- Czech Republic
- Denmark
- Finland
- Greece
- Hungary
- Italy
- Mexico
- Poland (bestseller of 2011)
- Slovenia
- Sweden
For many of the smaller countries here, I don't know the full chart statistics, but I do know that in a number of them, 21 spent 10+ weeks at No 1 and has one of the best chart runs of all time.
Finally it would be remiss of me not to mention the very few countries where 21 did not top the chart;
Spain - No 2 (for 22 weeks! - it was still a blockbuster here...)
Russia - No 2
Portugal - No 3
Japan - No 4 (still the bestselling Western album here in 2012)
I don't have complete historical stats for all albums in all countries. However I think, given all the data above, and the fact that 21 has outsold its nearest competitor worldwide by a scale of 4:1 over the period 2011-2012, the following can be reasonably asserted:
21 is the most dominant artist album of all time worldwide, in terms of its charts and sales performance relative to its competitors.
Some may argue for Thriller - and I cannot definitively prove otherwise. One final 'trump card' I will bring in regarding the years 2011-2012 for Adele, however, is what I would call the "surplus" success outside of 21;
- 19 was one of the world's bestselling albums in 2011 and continued to sell well into 2012, as a catalogue album. It charted in the top ten in the UK, US and Brazil (at least).
- LATRAH became the first music DVD to go diamond (1m sales) in the US for several years, also becoming one of the longest-running chart toppers ever there. It also sold very well in Brazil (where the market is more geared towards live albums) and, as mentioned previously, was the year's No 2 bestseller in the Netherlands in 2012.
- Grammies 2012 drew their 2nd highest audience ever (after 1984).
- Adele's performance of Someone Like You at the 2011 Brits is already considered one of the most iconic musical TV performances ever.
- Adele recorded one of the best-received and bestselling Bond themes in history, Skyfall, which hit No 1 in several countries and No 2 in the UK, equalling Duran Duran's A View To A Kill as the highest-charting Bond theme there).
In short - and I thank anyone who has bothered to read this post all the way through - I think that the 2011/2012 era for Adele has been one of the most phenomenal in music history. More impressively still, she has somehow been ubiquitous without being ubiquitous - if that makes sense. Her music has dominated the world's airwaves despite her public appearances being few and far between. Most previous blockbusters have been accompanied by a media extravaganza and the performers actively promoting themselves as the world's biggest and best. By contrast, Adele has achieved all that I have detailed above despite being out for months with vocal problems and having a child.
Anyway thanks, ATRL, for indulging me in this post - I hope at least some of you will appreciate it.
Cheers - phoenix83.
this is like the only good world wide sales thread 
#30million XD
, 
.... since it was for UKMix one can understand the "21 outselling Morning Glory" significance.... but WHEN she gets the Oscar 
....just scribble up another one here for ATRL kk.