Adele’s ’25’ shatters record for most albums sold in first week

In Nielsen’s 24-year history, “25” is the first album to pass the 3-million sales mark in its first week of release and only the second to exceed 2 million sales in one week. Just imagine how many more records this album will shatter as we get closer to the holiday season.

The first week numbers for “25” put the sultry singer at the head of an elite club of artists, including Britney Spears, Whitney Houston, Eminem and Lady Gaga, whose albums have debuted with more than 1 million US copies. All of the additional 98,000 units sold in the equivalent units metric come from single songs sold and streams of her single “Hello.”

By comparison, every release in 2015 looks limp compared to Adele sales. “I hope you enjoy the record as much as I enjoyed making it for you”. Adele’s latest sold over 800,000 copies in the United Kingdom – toppling Be Here Now’s opening week of 696,00 in 1997 – and, with over 250,000 digital purchases of the LP, quickly racked the most downloads ever in an opening week in the history of the British charts, Billboard writes. At the time of writing, Adele’s video for “Hello”, the lead single taken from the new album, is sitting at just over half a billion views, a number it racked up in just a few weeks.

Bakula pointed out that when *NSYNC beat the record, there were no streaming services available, so more people were buying albums. There is no word on a tour for the U.S.at this time.

Adele has previously said she finds touring lonely.

Oh, and if you’re tired of Taylor Swift and her #squadgoals you may be interested to know that, thanks to Adele, 1989 is no longer the best-selling album of 2015.