Adele Is No.1, Yet Again
Adele continued to dominate the music charts with what is far and away the most popular album of the year as her 21 (XL/Columbia) album rose once again to the No. 1 slot on the Billboard album chart.
The British soul singer has now spent 13 weeks this year on top of the chart and sold more than 4.1 million records, more than double the next best-selling album, Lady Gagas Born This Way,according to Nielsen SoundScan. No album has had more than four million sales in one year since 2005, when Mariah Careys Emancipation of Mimi sold 4.97 million copies.
Adeles feat overshadowed a strong debut showing for Casting Crowns, a Christian rock act that had been projected to do well with its new album Come to the Well.(Provident) But in the end, people bought 99,000 copies of the Casting Crown recording over the last week and the group had to settle for runner-up. The bands last album, Until the Whole World Hears, sold 167,000 units in its debut in 2009.
One other new album made it into the top 10: the R&B singer Joe sold 33,000 copies of his new The Good, the Bad, the Sexy (Kedar Entertainment) putting him at No. 8 on the chart.
Last weeks No. 1 album, Evanescence (Wind Up), by the gothic-flavored alternative rock band of the same name, dropped rapidly to fifth place with 40,000 copies sold. Two other albums that had strong debuts last week Five Finger Death Punchs American Capitalist (Prospect Park) and Lauren Alainas Wildflower (19/Interscope/Mercury Nashville) also saw their sales slow sharply in their second week, falling more than 60 percent but staying in the top 10. Scotty McCreery, Tony Bennett, Lil Wayne and Lady Antebellum also! remaine d in the top 10 for another week with their latest albums.
Rihanna had the most downloaded album, as more than 231,000 digital copies of We Found Love (Def Jam) were downloaded.