Adele topped the charts last year with her new album 25 and laid claim to the most popular album of the year, leaving sales of Taylor Swift’s 1989 in the dust.
Adele’s 25 sold 8.01 million equivalent album units—a combination of traditional album sales and streaming equivalent albums—last year following its launch on Nov. 20, according to Nielsen Music. That number includes 7.44 million in traditional albums, a whopping number for the music industry. Sales like those haven’t been seen since 2004 when Usher’s Confessions topped the list with 7.98 traditional albums sold—and we can safely assume that didn’t take into account the illegal Napster downloads of the era.
This is the third time Adele has earned the top selling album in a calendar year, making her the first artist to ever do so.
With only six weeks in the selling year, Adele managed to sell more than the No. 2, No. 3, and No. 4 albums combined. For comparison, No. 2 Taylor Swift’s 1989 sold 3.1 million equivalent album units in 2015. (Though, in total, sales are about double that sum since she topped the chart with that album in 2014 following its October release. 1989 sold 3.66 million that year.)
Here is the full list of the top 10 selling albums of 2015 (based on total equivalent album units):
1. Adele, 25
Total Units: 8,008,000
2. Taylor Swift, 1989
Total Units: 3,105,000
3. Justin Bieber, Purpose
Total Units: 2,225,000
4. Ed Sheeran, X
Total Units: 2,206,000
5. The Weeknd, Beauty Behind the Madness
Total Units: 2,045,000
6. Drake, If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late
Total Units: 1,919,000
7. Meghan Trainor, Title
Total Units: 1,795,000
8. Sam Smith, In the Lonely Hour
Total Units: 1,741,000
9. Sam Hunt, Montevallo
Total Units: 1,378,000
10. Fetty Wap, Fetty Wap
Total Units: 1,295,000
