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Billboard: Adele's '25' is officially the top-selling album of 2015

Adele is saying “hello” to the New Year by notching another milestone.
Adele attends the television show 2015! Menschen, Bilder, Emotionen - RTL Jahresrueckblick on Dec. 6, 2015 in Cologne, Germany. (Photo by Sascha Steinbach/Getty)
Adele attends the television show 2015! Menschen, Bilder, Emotionen - RTL Jahresrueckblick on Dec. 6, 2015 in Cologne, Germany.

Adele is saying “hello” to the New Year by notching another milestone. Her new album “25” was officially named the top-selling album of 2015 by Billboard. 

But the story doesn’t end there. With 7.44 million copies sold, the British pop sensation notched the best-selling album in a calendar year in 12 years. On March 23, 2004, Usher’s “Confessions” hit store shelves, ultimately moving 7.98 million copies by year’s end. Adele sold nearly that same amount in just 6 weeks’ time. 

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Monday’s news came as Billboard also announced that “25” had finished its sixth straight week as the No. 1 album in the U.S. since its release on Nov. 20 with an additional 363,000 units sold. The last album to score six consecutive weeks on the perch of the Billboard 200 was Susan Boyle’s “I Dreamed a Dream,” which debuted on Dec. 12, 2009. And the last album that sold more than 300,000 copies in the same time was Creed’s “Weathered,” which was released on Nov. 20, 2011. 

In its debut week alone, Adele’s “25” sold 3.38 million copies. That average of 9 copies per second obliterated *NSYNC’s long-standing record for most albums sold in a week – 2.4 million. And in the weeks before Christmas, the singer’s American tour supporting the album sold out in mere minutes.