That's not what I was trying to say. Two different points here:
1. Adele's post album singles sold progressively worse, largely because of how many albums she has sold. I have no doubt that Set Fire to the Rain could have outsold Someone Like You in some alternate universe where they were released in a different order/at the same time. Rumour Has It seemed to really struggle from the sales, though.
2. Adele's post-album singles held up better than most because she was such a new phenomenon and attracted the interest of people over time. Compare to a Lady Gaga - Fame vs. The Fame Monster situation. Or a Taylor Swift - Fearless vs. Speak Now situation. Fearless was able to sustain huge hits over time and sell 6 million copies because she was an exploding crossover artist still. Fast forward to Speak Now, and she sold 3 million copies in ~2 months, and didn't even bother pushing singles aggressively afterwards.
My argument is that incredibly high album sales affect singles sales. In Taylor's case, she sells her albums very quickly, so singles are quickly affected.
Okay, you have a point.
However it is still weird for me to see her promo singles smashing the ****ing hell and her post album singles (from Speak Now era) not doing much.
I'm very satisfied. Two Taylor promo singles, Adele with her huge hype, a song with 400 million views & the #1 most played song in the country are above. How can she compete with that? O
