Adele's new album smashes single-week sales record
British star's 25 hits 3.38 million mark, 20th album to sell more than a million in 1st week
25 is the first album to sell more than 3 million copies in a week
Adele's 25 has joined an elite club of only 20 albums that have sold at least a million copies in a single week. The British singer's new album has sold 3.38 million copies in its first week, according to Nielsen Music. It is the first album to sell more than three million copies in one week in Nielsen's history, which has been tracking first-week purchases since 1991.
Taylor Swift and 'N Sync left in the dust
Adele's 25 is already the best-selling album of the year, soaring past the 1.8 million copies sold of Taylor Swift's 1989. But Swift probably doesn't feel too bad, since her albums Speak Now and Red also sold more than a million copies in a single week, making her the only artist with three albums in the elite club.
The previous record for single-week album sales in the United States was held by 'N Sync, whose 2000 album No Strings Attached sold 2.4 million copies in its first week. 'N Sync was one of the most popular boy bands in the world, selling millions of albums and dominating the music scene in the '90s and 2000s with other groups including the Backstreet Boys.
Other pop stars who have sold more than a million copies in a week
The Backstreet Boys were on top of the world near the end of the 20th century when their album Millennium sold more than 1.1 million copies in its first week in May 1999.
Oops!... I did it again, Britney Spears's 2000 album, sold more than 1.3 million copies in its debut week.
Rappers in the single-week sales club
Eminem, 50 Cent and Lil Wayne all have albums with sales of more than a million copies in a single week.
Although they're not really considered part of the rap scene, rap-rockers Limp Bizkit may be one of the more surprising names on this list. Their third album, Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water, sold more than a million copies in October 2000.
The first artists to officially sell more than a million albums in a week
The soundtrack for the movie The Bodyguard, featuring Whitney Houston's iconic song I Will Always Love You, was the first album to officially accomplish the feat, selling more than a million copies in a single week in January 1993.
Garth Brooks's 1998 Double Live album was the first album to officially debut with more than a million copies sold in its first week.
The Beatles album 1 hit the million mark in its sixth week on the charts in December 2000. Although the Fab Five didn't officially manage this feat until 2000, they smashed all kinds of records of their own during the heyday of Beatlemania in the 1960s, boasting several of the most critically acclaimed and best-selling albums of all time.
