Adele Is Still On Top Of Her Game

Adele got the year started off with a bang in March when her 21 sold 352,000, marking the year's highest debut at the time and starting a remarkable chart run that would give the British singer the year's top-selling album to date. Unlike the big splashes made by other stars, Adele's route was the slow and steady one, helped along by the inescapable single "Rolling in the Deep," which helped land the album in the top spot more than a dozen non-consecutive times.

Also unlike her fellow divas, Adele has not dropped a flurry of singles, but rather let "Deep" sink in for more than six months, just recently moving on to a second single, "Someone Like You," which she performed at the recent 2001 VMAs.

A recent Rolling Stone article noted that the album also got a boost when a number of dance-pop-leaning radio stations that wouldn't normally play such a sedate ballad picked it up earlier this year to great success. While the song clearly clicked with female listeners, the robust 2 million in physical sales — along with a record-setting 1.1 million in digital copies — indicates that it has pulled in older and casual music fans as well.

"Deep" was almost an afterthought, slapped together in a day, though upon hearing it, Adele's manager immediately dubbed it the first single. And, in this era when other divas like Gaga, Beyoncé and Katy Perry push out singles and videos at a rapid pace, Adele's label took the opposite approach, purposely rolling out the single laconically and allowing the album to catch on in a slow-burn manner.