Adele’s ’30’ scores biggest opening sales of 2021 in US
Adele‘s new album ’30’ has opened at the top of the US charts, with 839,000 equivalent album units sold, according to MRC Data.
This marks the biggest opening sales of 2021, landing ahead of Drake’s ‘Certified Lover Boy‘, which opened with 613,000 units in September.
The US figures comprise 692,000 album sales (487,000 physical albums and 205,000 digital albums), as well as 141,000 SEA units (based on 185.4 million streams) and 6,000 TEA (track equivalent albums). This makes ’30’ the biggest selling album of the year to date in the US.
Last week, Adele also shot straight to the top spot in the UK with her fourth LP, which became the fastest selling record of 2021 so far after clocking up 261,000 sales. It scored the biggest first-week sales for an album since Ed Sheeran’s ‘÷’ in 2017, as well as the biggest opener for a female solo album since Adele’s last album, ‘25‘, in 2015, according to the Official Charts Company.
Adele has now topped the chart with all of her albums, a record for a female artist. Her single ‘Easy On Me‘ has also maintained the top spot in the UK singles chart for the sixth week in a row. It has become her longest-running Number One in the UK singles chart, outstripping her 2011 hit single ‘Someone Like You’.
In other news, Kanye West‘s Sunday Service choir performed a cover of ‘Easy On Me’ in honour of late designer Virgil Abloh, who died yesterday (November 28).
Their cover was a reworked version of the song’s original lyrics, with the choir singing “Go easy on me, father / I am still your child / And I need the chance to / Feel your love around” in the chorus. The words “In loving memory of Virgil Abloh, creative director of ‘Donda’” appeared on the screen during the livestream.