ADELE KEEPS “ROLLING”

Adele’s sophomore XL/Columbia Records release, 21, is on target to debut at #1 next week with the year’s highest sales total, expected to be anywhere from 275-300k, and possibly even higher.

With more than 150k in first-day sales reported by those music retailers who haven’t been robbed blind by Lindsay Lohan, the album will be fueled by a non-stop parade of TV appearances and a full-court press by Steve Barnett and Team Columbia.

Adele’s run began at last Friday’s Today Show, continued with a performance for Late Night with David Letterman and the show’s online site Monday (2/21), stints on Ellen and Jimmy Kimmel tomorrow (2/24), a CBS Early Show appearance Friday (2/25) and a Monday (2/28) slot on Chelsea Lately. In addition, she’ll tape a Live from the Artist’s Den for PBS this Friday that will air later this year.

Props also to Rick Krim's VH1 team, which has been on the single, "Rolling in the Deep," from the very start, with 10 weeks of heavy play, followed by two weeks of Gung Ho rotation surrounding this week's release.

The stateside push comes in the wake of her Brits Awards performance last week, which sent two of her albums and singles into the Top 5 in the U.K., the best such showing for a living artist since The Beatles.

Adele broke in with a bang for her debut album, 19, which came out in January, 2008, and earned her a pair of Grammy awards at the 2009 ceremony, including Best New Artist and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. The album had sold over 903k copies and 1.85 million digital tracks in the U.S. since its release

The only other newcomers to make a dent will be veteran Wind-up Bayside and Sire’s Destroy Rebuild Until God Shows, both in the 14-17k range.

In a strange quirk, due to the Grammys airing two weeks later than last year and an extra day of Valentine's shopping, the market was actually up 10% vs. the same week last year, up 12% over last week and now down just 11% to date.

Well, it’s a start.