Posted by Andrew Unterberger on 12/28/2011 at 2:10 PM News

The Popdust Files: 21, adele, Billboard, christmas, holidays, michael buble, sales, young jeezy

Man, where would the music industry be this year if not for these two moneymakers? Adele’s 21 and Michael Buble’s Christmas have now moved over eight million records combined in the States this year, easily 2011′s two best-selling albums. (21 did most of the heavily lifting in that combined total, but it had about a ten-month head start). Now in the year’s last new albums chart, it’s only fitting that they should be the LPs occupying the top two spots—Christmas at #1 with 467k sold, and 21 at #2 with 399k. Amazingly, the sales number for 21 in its 45th week of release is Adele’s best yet, beating out the 352,000 it sold in its debut week back in February. (People must have been buying a lot of CDs this week for some random reason.)

Behind these two industry titans debuts Young Jeezy, whose super-long-delayed TM 103: Hustlerz Ambition was finally released and sold 233k copies. Meanwhile, blockbuster 2011 releases from Drake (Take Care), Rihanna (Talk That Talk), and the Now Series (Now 40) all see huge bumps in numbers thanks to holiday sales. Recent Drake beefer Common is also in there somewhere, selling 69k of his new album The Dreamer, The Believer in its first week of sales. He and Jeezy are, remarkably, the only two albums to debut anywhere on the charts—guess everyone else had the sense not to go up against the big boys come mistletoe time.

Perhaps most notably, thanks to some of the big guns, 2011 is still on pace to outdo 2010 in albums sold, the first positive trending in that respect in over a half-decade. “You’re welcome,” Adele and Buble not co-release an official statement saying.

[Billboard]