travel plans: Adele's Impressive Run At #1: Just The Facts

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Adele's Impressive Run At #1: Just The Facts

Singer's 21 will bump down a notch next week to make room for Bruce Springsteen's Wrecking Ball.
By Gil Kaufman

Adele
Photo: Jeff Kravitz/ FilmMagic

Adele got so comfortable sitting in the #1 spot on the Billboard 200 chart during the first 10 weeks of 2012 that we started to forget anyone else could knock her off the perch. But after 23 non-consecutive weeks in the pole position dating back to last year and a board-running sprint for every chart week of the year so far, her good thing will come to an end next week when Bruce Springsteen's Wrecking Ball edges her out of the top position.

Sure, she came in at just 1,300 copies below the Boss at #2, and there's a good chance she'll be back in the hunt for #1 in the near future, but with a pause in the action, now is as good a time as any to take another look at her incredible run.

Some 21 facts:

» Her 23 non-consecutive weeks at #1 put Adele just one week short of the chart domination of two classic soundtracks: Prince's Purple Rain and Saturday Night Fever.

» Though she'll have to start over now, Adele was closing in on another all-time chart record: the most consecutive weeks at #1 by an album by a female solo act. That record still belongs to Carole King's Tapestry, which did it back in 1971 by running the board for 15 weeks. (Whitney Houston's "Bodyguard" soundtrack actually stayed in the #1 slot for 20 consecutive weeks, but that was not strictly a solo album.)

» Adele absolutely destroyed the record for the biggest post-Grammy sales boost in history when 21 moved 733,000 copies the week after she took home her six-pack of statues in February.

» The last album to hold the #1 spot before Springsteen took it was Michael Bublé's Christmas, which edged out Adele during the week ending December 25. So far, she's sold more than 8 million copies of 21, including more than 2 million in 2012 alone.

» During the course of her 55-week run on the charts, Adele has only fallen out of the top five once. In fact, she's been in the #1 or #2 spot in all but 17 of those weeks.

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