People Still Buy Music: Adele holds off some Christian rockers to return to No. 1

By Steven Hyden | October 26, 2011 | 6:59pm

Aux Features Music

It's been just over nine months since Adele released 21, and yet the year's biggest selling album continues to be a fixture in the upper reaches of the Billboard albums chart. Countless big-name artists have come and gone in that time, and yet Adele hangs in there, selling at a steady clip of around 100,000 copies per week. The week 21 clocks in at 106,000—the eighth consecutive week that it has topped 100,000 sold—and in the absence of a major new release, that was good enough for Adele to return to No. 1. So far 21 has spent 13 weeks at the top of the Billboard albums chart, which is the most weeks a record has spent at No 1 since the Titanic soundtrack tallied 16 weeks in 1998. Just in case 21's dominance of the albums chart wasn't already clear: It has sold 4.1 million copies, more twice the number of 2011's second highest seller, Lady Gaga's Born This Way, which has moved 1.9 million units.

Adele's only serious challenger this week was Casting Crowns, a Christian rock band whose album Come To The Well debuted on the chart at No. 2 with 99,000 copies sold. It is the group's fourth Top 10 album, and the second to reach No. 2, after 2007's The Altar And The Door. The group's previous record, Until The Whole World Hears, debuted at No. 4 with 167,000 sold. R&B singer Joe also debuts this week with The Good, The Bad, The Sexy, which enters the chart at No. 8 with 33,000 sold.