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Holy Crap: 730,000 for Adele’s “21″ in Its 21st Week at #1

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Posted by Andrew Unterberger on 02/22/2012 at 1:24 PM News

The Popdust Files: 21, adele, Billboard, charts, sales

Well, we knew that Adele was in for her biggest week yet in her post-Grammys victory lap, but we didn’t know it would be quite this big. Adele’s 21, off a night where she performed her biggest hit for an adoring studio crowed and won for Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Album of the Year and a couple other categories that haven’t even been invented yet, is reported to have sold 730,000 copies last week. That’s nearly twice the sales of 21‘s best week to this point—in its 52nd friggin’ week of release, no less—and would’ve been the third-best sales week for any album in 2011, behind only Lady Gaga’s Born This Way and Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter IV in their inaugural weeks of release. Damn, son.

Unsurprisingly, Adele is not the only artist with a big post-Grammys sales bump this week. Also surging back into the top ten on the latest charts are award-night performers/winners Bruno Mars (30-8 with Doo Wops and Hooligans), Lady Antebellum (17-9 for Own the Night) and Civil Wars (41-10 with Barton Hollow). Outside the top ten, an almost countless number of other artists see Grammy-related sales inflations, including Coldplay, Rihanna, The Band Perry, Skrillex, Foo Fighters, Taylor Swift, Mumford and Sons and the rest of the gang. (Reports of 2011 Grammys-related nostalgia bumping Esparanza Spaulding’s weekly sales from five copies to twelve have thusfar gone unsubstantiated.)

Also enjoying a huge bump on the charts this week—who else? Whitney Houston, whose sales have predictably skyrocketed after her tragic death two Saturdays ago. Whitney: The Greatest Hits sells more than any album not released by Adele this week (oh and by the way, debut album 19 is at #4 this week with over 100,000 sold, no big deal), falling in at #2 with 175k sold, while Whitney Houston (#37), the Bodyguard soundtrack (#38), I Look to You (#65), Whitney (#87), the Preacher’s Wife soundtrack (#90) and My Love is Your Love (#196) all also make appearances.

So can anyone unseat Adele before she goes for #22 next week? Well, there’s new albums from Fun., Tyga and uh, Sinead O’Connor to contend with…so in other words, ‘no.’ That Adele, reign just won’t let up.