Saturday, November 21, 2015

Adele's 25 set to break UK first-week album sales record

Adele

Adele's 25 set to break UK first-week album sales record

Having sold 300,000 copies on its first day, the singer has Oasis’s total of over 690,000 for Be Here Now in her sights

BY Chris Johnston
Saturday 21 November 2015 14.17 GMT

Adele is on track to set a new record for first-week sales after her latest album sold 300,000 copies in the UK on its first day.

The total for the singer’s third LP, 25, is second only to the third Oasis album, Be Here Now, which sold 424,000 copies on its release day in August 1997.

The Oasis album holds the record for the most first-week sales, with 695,761 copies. It is trailed by Take That’s Progress, which sold 518,601 copies in its first week in November 2010.

They remain the only two albums to crack the half-million barrier in their first week in the UK.

Martin Talbot, chief executive of the Official Charts Company, said: “Adele truly is a once-in-a-generation artist. Her appeal spans age groups and genres, from children to teenagers, right through to mums and dads, uncles and aunties.

“With this mammoth first-day sales tally, Adele has taken a further step towards greatness. Over the next few days we will find out whether it can pass the magic half a million sales mark.”

Sales of 25 will have been boosted by the decision to keep the album off streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music.

Industry sources expect the album to sell about 700,000 copies in the UK in its first week, while the US total could be 2.5m. About 1m CDs have been distributed to UK stores, with 3.6m shipped across the US.

An astonishing 30m copies of Adele’s previous album, 21, have been sold globally since it was released in January 2011, making it the UK’s bestselling album that year – and in 2012 as well. US sales accounted for more than a third of the total.

It sold just 208,000 copies in the UK in its first week and took a month to pass the half-million mark.

In comparison, Taylor Swift’s album 1989 has shifted almost 9m copies since it was released in October 2014, with almost 1.3m in the US in its first week.

Some reviewers have criticised Adele for failing to break the mould with her latest work, with the Guardian’s Alexis Petridis concluding: “25’s big issue is that, in every sense, it dwells a little too heavily on the past.”

He gave it three stars, while Neil McCormick in the Telegraph went all the way with five stars.

“You can detect nods to Lionel Richie, Phil Collins, Carole King, Burt Bacharach ... but it would be churlish to carp when pop doesn’t come much more perfect than this.”

THE GUARDIAN