Adele, the Queen of the New British Invasion

by Sheldon Rocha Leal

Introduction

Adele has just released her third album, 25, and it’s flying high all around the world, breaking records and overriding any conservative prediction made for its first week sales.

Initial predictions for this album were set at about 1.8million units sold in the first week in the USA, which would have given her album the distinction of having accumulated the greatest first week sales by a female artist in history. The record, pre the release of the album, belonged to Britney Spears whose album “Oops I Did It Again”, released in 2000, sold 1.3million units.

State of Play

Before the release of her album, “25", the world record stood at 2,4million units in a week, which belonged to the *Nsync album “No Strings Attached”, released in 2000. That being said, although *Nsync had managed to sell 2,4million albums in one week there was an artist who had managed to sell more units in a week: Hikaru Utada, a Japanese artist, managed to shift 3million units of her 2001 album “Distance”.

In analysing the above albums one can see that all these record breaking albums were released either in 2000 or 2001, which was a major juncture in the music business. Going into the naughties album sales started to descend with the advent of music downloads and post the Napster case, which opened the music industry’s Pandora’s Box, from which album sales have never recovered. Today if an artist can shift 500000 units they can call themselves a superstar and therefore many artists have resorted to touring in order to generate mega incomes.

25

So how successful was “25's” first week. Music critics had predicted that the album would sell anything from 1,3million to 1,8million in the first week. Those predictions soon started shifting and within three days of release Adele had taken the *Nsync record for first week sales. In the UK the album beat the first week record held by Oasis, which sat at over 690000 units and had been set in 1999 with the album “Be Here Now”.

In the United States alone Adele went on to sell over 4million units, breaking Hikaru Utada’s Japanese record and in the UK she broke the record and sold over 800000 units. Total world sales at the end of the week sat at 5,7million units, which is 9albums sold every second for a whole week. Her previous two albums, 19 and 21 also recharted because of a surge in sales in those albums. So not only did Adele have the biggest selling album in the world for the week, but also the 8th biggest selling album in the world for the week, 21.

Perspective

Just to place it in perspective Adele’s first week sales are so enormous that if you had to compare these sales to the career of an artist like Rick Ross, who has released 7 albums in his career and has accumulated just over 4million combined sales of all his albums or Nicki Minaj (who is considered to be a superstar) who has also released 3 albums like Adele, who has accumulated sales of 4,6million units of all her albums combined, one can easily say that not only is Adele a superstar she is a megastar.

Conclusion

Every generation has their icon. In the 1950's Elvis Presley dominated the charts and broke world records; in the 1960's The Beatles took over the music world and ushered in the British Invasion; in the 1970's Elton John and Stevie Wonder were the stars that people looked up to; in the 1980's Madonna and Michael Jackson were the King and Queen of Pop; in the 1990's Mariah Carey and Celine Dion dominated world music; in the 2000's Eminem controlled charts and now Adele. But Adele’s feat is even more amazing considering that people are not buying albums any longer and the focus of the music industry has changed, yet her album sales are comparable to those of any of the artists mentioned in this paragraph.

She has now released 3 albums and her sales total just over 40million units and like the Beatles in the 1960's she has ushered in a new British Invasion, with various other British artists now also getting the limelight, people like: Sam Smith, James Bay, George Ezra, Ed Sheeran and Hozier.