U.K. CHARTS: ALL ADELE, ALL THE TIME

Adele’s 30 (Columbia) has scored the biggest opening week of 2021 and registered the most first-week sales on the U.K. Official Albums chart of any album in the last four years.

Her domination of the charts continues at singles, where she has #1 (“Easy on Me”), #2 (“Oh My God”) and #4 (“I Drink Wine”).

30—Adele’s fourth #1 album—registered 261k in sales, topping ABBA’s Voyage, which sold 204k. It’s the biggest first week for an album since Ed Sheeran’s Divide (Atlantic) in 2017. The last time a female artist had bigger numbers—no surprise here—was Adele’s 25 in 2015.

More than two-thirds of sales were physical, and 30 is both the week’s biggest seller on vinyl, with 16,700 copies, and the most-streamed album of the week, with 55.7m plays for its 12 tracks.

Adele is the first woman to hit #1 in the U.K. with her first four albums, and her previous three titles all return to the Top 40: 25 is #15; 21 is #18 and debut 19 lands at #31.

On singles, “Easy on Me” hits a personal best of six weeks at #1, with more than 101k in chart sales and 11.5m streams.

Some non-Adele collections actually debuted in the Top 10 this week, too.

Oasis’ Knebworth 1996 (Big Brother), its first U.K. Top 10 album in 11 years, is #4; Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’ second collaboration, Raise the Roof (East West/Rhino), lands at #5; D-Block Europe’s mixtape Home Alone 2 (Virgin) breaks in at #6; Elbow’s Flying Dream 1 (Polydor) soars to #7; and James Blunt’s greatest hits collection, The Stars Beneath My Feet (2004-2021), debuts at #9. Bruce Springsteen’s live album The Legendary 1979 No Nukes Concerts (Columbia) is #11.

At singles, Sheeran has the two Top 5 slots not filled by Adele: “Shivers” at #3 and “Bad Habits” at #5. D-Block Europe f/Central Cee’s “Overseas” is new in the Top 10, opening at #8.