Adele, Bruno Mars, Civil Wars among Grammy sales winners
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Adele’s latest album has only 304 million people left in the U.S to reach. One full year after its release, her ‘21’ continues to find a new audience. In its 52 weeks in the top 10 of the U.S. pop charts, ‘21’ has now sold more than 7.3 million copies in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan.
In the first full sales week after her Grammy wins and performance, Adele’s ‘21’ has tallied its best week ever on the U.S. pop chart, selling another 730,000 copies to its total. This places it atop the pop charts for the 21st nonconsecutive week. The run, as reported earlier, sees Adele surpass the 20-week grip at the top of the pop charts by the Whitney Houston-led soundtrack to ‘The Bodyguard.’
Adele, back in the news last night for flipping the bird at the Brit Awards, has two albums in the Top 5. Her 2008 debut, ‘19,’ sold 87,000 copies this week, and has sold just shy of 2 million since its release. The mighty increase by her ‘21,’ however, is the largest post-Grammy sales bump since SoundScan began providing the music industry with accurate sales data in 1991. The previous post-Grammy high was held by Norah Jones, whose ‘Come Away With Me’ sold 621,000 copies after her multiple Grammy wins in 2003.
The Feb. 12 Grammy telecast was kind to numerous other artists as well. Bruno Mars saw his genre-hopping, R&B-centered debut, ‘Doo-Wops & Hooligans,’ rocket back into the Top 10, up from No. 30 to No. 8 this week. Mars performed his vintage rocker ‘Runaway Baby’ near the top of the Grammy telecast, and his album sold 38,000 copies this week compared with 16,000 the previous week.
Likewise, folksy rock duo the Civil Wars, who performed a snippet of the title track to their debut, ‘Barton Hollow,’ on the Grammys, moved from No. 41 on the pop charts to No. 10. The act performed just before country star Taylor Swift, and manager Nate Yetton said the act’s website was immediately flooded with traffic. Post-Grammys, ‘Barton Hollow’ shot to the Top 5 of the iTunes charts, and the sudden interest in the duo even inspired this MTV headline: Who are the Civil Wars? The act are far from a secret, however, as ‘Barton Hollow’ has now sold more than 330,000 copies.
Fans also continue to gravitate toward the work of Whitney Houston after her sudden passing on Feb. 11. Her ‘Greatest Hits’ is at No. 2 this week, having sold 176,000 copies. Slightly further down, her 1985 debut, ‘Whitney Houston,’ is at No. 37, and her soundtrack to ‘The Bodyguard’ is at No. 38. They have each sold a little more than 17,000 copies.
Last week’s top debut, Van Halen’s ‘A Different Kind of Truth,’ drifts from No. 2 to No. 6, suffering a 69% sales dip. This week, the album sold 58,000 copies. Paul McCartney’s ‘Kisses On the Bottom,’ which also debuted last week, had a slightly more consistent second week, with sales down just 22%. Only a couple dozen albums sold separate Van Halen and McCartney, and the latter no doubt benefited from his multiple Grammy appearances.
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-- Todd Martens
