Adele’s ’30’ becomes biggest selling album of 2021 in US within three days
It overtakes the record held by Taylor Swift's 'Evermore'
Adele’s new album ’30’ has become the biggest selling album of the year in the United States just three days after its release.
The singer’s long-awaited fourth album finally arrived last week (November 19), and is immediately breaking records, with hundreds of thousands of copies already sold.
According to Billboard, more than 500,000 copies of Adele‘s new album were sold between its release date last Friday and Sunday (November 21), taking it past the record set by Taylor Swift‘s ‘Evermore’, which has sold 462,000 this year despite being released in December 2020, as well as the singer’s new album, ‘Red (Taylor’s Version)’, which has sold 369,000 copies so far.
Largely written in response to her divorce from her husband of three years, Simon Konecki, Adele’s ’30’ has been hailed as her “best album yet” by fans.
In a four-star review of the album, Rolling Stone UK said: “Success is a difficult place to be when you are one of the world’s best-selling artists. A stumble is as big as a fall when you sell in the millions and break records with every release. As a collection it excels in quality beyond 25, and no doubt at this point – six years since that last hit album – every song, note and melody would have been poured over, dissected, curated, picked and perfected.
“While 30 is not Adele’s purest moment, and fans of her first two albums will miss the irreverence and wit that we know from her television interviews, this is by far her most heartrendingly honest work to date, and that will be more than enough to continue Adele’s dominance as one of the world’s greatest artists.”
Elsewhere, to toast the new album Adele hosted an ITV special at the weekend, titled ‘An Audience With Adele’. During the show, footage of exuberant dancing in the audience from actor Emma Thompson went viral.
The broadcast drew comparisons to a similar US special, ‘For One Night Only’, which aired last week and featured an interview with Oprah Winfrey as well as another intimate gig.