Adele's '21' is the best-selling album since 2004

When you ask people well-versed in the world of pop music who the queen of the genre was this year, most will probably respond to you with one of two names: Adele or Lady Gaga. While Gaga was busy topping Forbes‘ 2011 “Top Earning Women In Music” list by reeling in $90 million from endorsements, extensive touring and record sales, Adele conquered radio and Billboard‘s charts all throughout what has become truly a tremendous breakout year for the British songstress.

Since it hit shelves on May 23, Gaga has sold 2,029,528 copies of her album Born This Way, but that impressive number doesn’t come close to the feat achieved by Adele’s sophomore LP, 21. Eleven months to the date on which it was released, the official sales tally for 21 sits at a whopping 5,280,672. Not only does that make the album the best-selling of 2011, it makes it the best-selling since Usher’s Confessions, which sold over eight million copies in 2004.

Even though the year is approaching its end, don’t expect things to slow down for Adele and 21. With holiday shopping currently in full swing, consumers bought 276,688 copies of the album last week, which was up 48% from the previous seven-day stretch. And with judgement day for Adele’s six Grammy nominations approaching on February 12, the weekly numbers may very well increase even more at the onset of victory.

Source: Consequence of Sound