Adele Notches 2011 Best Sales Year

Although 2011 is yet to pull down its curtain, Adele the 23-year-old British singer has been predicted by many to have the biggest-selling album of the year due to the steady sales of her second studio album "21", but with the new year fast approaching, it's revealed that the album, which came out last January, has not only sold more copies than any other album in the U.S. in 2011 (more than 5.6 million), but which has also moved the most units of any artist since 2004. According to a Reuters report, those gaudy figures (which top 15 million worldwide) make Adele the first artist to cross the 5 million mark in one year. Since Usher did so seven years ago, back in 2004, the R&B performer sold a grand total of 7.9 million copies with his fourth studio album "Confessions".

There have been other big hits along the way to Adele's mark, including Eminem selling more than 3.4 million copies of his comeback Recovery album last year and Taylor Swift taking the honors in 2009 with Fearless, which sold 3.2 million copies. But none have come as close to Usher's mark in the interim.