Adele makes chart history with 25 – officially biggest album EVER

Adele’s new album “25” has sold more than 2.3 million copies in the United States alone during its first three days on the market, a stunning number for a music industry that has seen sales steadily fall in the digital era. That makes it by far the fastest-selling album in a decade and a half, and puts it on pace to surpass the longtime record holder, boy band ‘N Sync’s album “No Strings Attached”, which sold 2.4 million in 2000 during its first week of release.

Ed Sheeran held the previous record for weekly digital album sales, with 95,709.

Adele’s decision follows Taylor Swift’s move last year to not offer her 1989 album for free, a move that resulted in 1989 becoming the biggest-selling album in the world last year with sales of more than 8.5 million.

In addition to the jaw-dropping sales of “25”, renewed interest in the British pop-soul singer has resulted in the re-appearance of her “21” and “19” albums, which re-entered the charts and sold 28,000 and 17,000 copies this week, respectively.

Fans applauded the tour, Adele’s first in four years, on Twitter while media sites noted that the 27-year-old singer appeared to have overcome her self-professed fear of performing before large crowds. Since she has released so many of these ballads before and has such a distinctive sound, about five of the tracks on 25 could be knocked out for sounding so similar. That’s not going to be a particularly great way of listening to 25 – because Pandora is a radio service, it means you can’t choose what to listen to and will have to wait for a station to play the new songs – but it does mean that Adele’s album is streaming in some form.

The statistics surrounding the album are staggering, topped by the simple fact that no album has ever sold 800,000 copies to reach Number 1 in the history of British music.

Adele is known for her power ballads, and that is certainly present in her third album.

Adele recently announced that she’ll be kicking of her first tour in four years in 2016. Eventually in July, she agreed to have it on Apple Music after Apple Inc. agreed to compensate artists in the course of a free trial. This is especially apparent in “River Lea” and “Million Years Ago”, some of Adele’s most powerfully wistful and evocative songs yet.

Adele’s is a kind of one-size-fits-all sadness that everyone can get in on, much as she herself described her new song “When We Were Young”, which is, she told SiriusXM, about “Seeing everyone that you’ve ever fallen out with, everyone that you’ve ever loved, everyone that you’ve never loved, and stuff like that”.