Adele to top 6 million album sales in wake of second BRITs performance

According to the latest Official Charts Company sales data, Adele is on course to sell over 6 million albums in the UK by the end of this week.

Since her career-changing performance at the BRIT Awards with MasterCard last February, someone has bought one of her albums (either her 2008 debut album, 19, or her 2011 record-breaking follow-up, 21) on average, every seven seconds.

And with 19 and 21 teetering just below the 2 million and 4 million sales marks, respectively, following her UK live return at tomorrow night’s BRITs, sales of her albums easily rocket past six million copies.

After winning the Critics’ Choice Award in 2008, Adele returned to The BRITs last year to perform a track from her then recently released second album. Accompanied only by a piano, her heartfelt rendition of Someone Like You pretty much made the Tottenham-born singer/songwriter a household name over night. That week, Someone Like You climbed 46 places up the Official Singles Chart to Number 1, while both 19 and 21 were well on course to break the million sales barrier. Within ten months of that performance, 21 had overtaken Amy Winehouse’s Back In Black to become the biggest selling album of the 21st Century.

"In the past year, Adele has gone from being one of many popular British talents, to being bona fide international superstar,” comments the Official Charts Company’s managing director, Martin Talbot. “No-one could possibly have imagined, when she stepped on the O2 stage for last year's BRITs, that a year later she would be able to count a total of 6 million album sales and an album which would sit alongside Thriller, Brothers In Arms and Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band as one of the Top 10 biggest sellers of all time."

The BRIT Awards 2012 with MasterCardwill take place at London's The O2 tomorrow night (February 21) and will be broadcast live on ITV 1.

Adele - Someone Like You [Live] on MUZU.