As prophesied in the book of Pop Music Revelations, Adele's
25 is out and has fully taken over the world. And there's nothing any
leaks can do about it.
The comeback album emerges four years after
21, her last release, which smashed records, garnered numerous awards, and sponsored countless breakup recoveries. However anxious Adele's fans were for new music, though, they can't possibly rival the music industry's excitement over her return. The internet introduced myriad ways to listen and own music — not all of them legal — but Adele's soulful torch songs have buoyed her beyond the industry's reduced expectations.
To explain what, exactly, that means, here are four major numbers that make Adele such a formidable artist.
11.2 million: Number of 21 albums sold in the United States
When you factor in the rest of the world,
21 sold more than 30 million albums.
There are a few things that make these numbers notable. First and foremost, buying actual albums has become an anomaly — yet Adele managed to sell almost as many albums in 2011 as fellow belter Celine Dion did for her smash hit album
Falling Into You in 1996.
But Dion recorded in an era when albums that sold that many copies were far more common. (There were three by women artists alone in 1995, for instance.) That's no longer true now. If you take into account the rise of streaming (which isn't counted in album sales), Adele's numbers would far surpass Dion's.
Adele still dominates when you stack her up against her contemporaries. Taylor Swift, for example, sold 3.66 million copies of
1989 in the USlast year. In 2011 alone, Adele sold over 2 million more, with 5.82 million.
The easiest explanation for Adele's success in album sales is that, quite simply, her fan base is not just broader but older. "A lot of her following is older than Taylor Swift's," Rolling Stone editor Anthony DeCurtis recently told USA Today, "and they are people who will buy a CD or download a record," as opposed to listening on Spotify or another streaming service.