Congratulations are in order for Mr. Bruce Springsteen, who knocked Adele’s relentless 21 out of the #1 spot on Billboard’s Top 200 this week. And they said it couldn’t be done!
The Boss notched his 10th #1 debut with his new album Wrecking Ball, which sold 196,000 copies in its first week of sales, according to Nielsen SoundScan, scarcely bumping the Grammy-winning songstress out of her longstanding position on top. But the win didn’t come easy. In fact, Springsteen apparently squeezed out Adele by just over 1,300 copies, so the race was as tight as possible.
Springsteen’s Wrecking Ball is the first release to take Adele off the #1 spot this year. Even so, don’t shed any tears for Adele just yet, because 21 also surpassed the 8 million sales mark this week, making it the first album to top 8 million in sales since Usher’s hits-packed 2004 disc, Confessions. Moreover, Adele’s 21 sales totaled 195,000, which was plenty enough to secure her the #2 spot on the chart, just above NOW 41, which pushed 152,000 copies. Lady Antebellum’s Own the Night claimed the #4 spot on the list at 108,000 copies sold, and Coldplay’s Mylo Xyloto rounded out the top 5 with 100,000 in sales.
In other Boss news, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band are set to tour North America in support of Wrecking Ball beginning this weekend.
It’s hardly a shock, but Adele’s blockbuster 21 is now officially the best-selling album of 2011. The British soul vocalist pushed 5.82 million copies of her album last year, and the singer’s hit single, “Rolling in the Deep,” was also the year’s top-selling song, selling a whopping 5.81 million copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan’s year-end sales report.