Bruce Springsteen To End Adele’s Run At #1?
There’s been no other #1 album in 2012 besides Adele’s unstoppable 21 — and it hasn’t even been close — though all of that might change this week as Bruce Springsteen is poised to make a run at the top spot on the Billboard albums chart.
According to industry site Hits Daily Double, Springsteen’s new Wrecking Ball disc is giving 21 its toughest competition to date in the battle for #1 on next week’s Top 200. With slightly more than half of retail data compiled, Adele has sold roughly 89,000 copies of her album, while Springsteen has sold nearly 82,000.
Based on those early estimates, Hits is estimating Wrecking Ball will sell approximately 200,000 copies (Springsteen’s previous studio album, 2009′s Working on a Dream, bowed at #1 with sales of more than 223,000 copies), ending Adele’s run of 10 consecutive weeks atop the Billboard albums chart. The last record to sit at #1 besides 21 was Michael Bublé’s Christmas, which outgunned Adele for the top spot during the week ending December 25.
Since then, Adele’s held tight at #1, and, in the process, her 21 has racked up chart records, seemingly with each passing week. The album has already surpassed the likes of the “Titanic” soundtrack and Whitney Houston’s “The Bodyguard” soundtrack in terms of non-consecutive weeks at #1, and shattered the mark for biggest post-Grammy sales bump in the history of Nielsen SoundScan.
If her reign atop the charts does come to an end this week, Adele will have spent 23 non-consecutive weeks at #1 — one short of tying iconic albums like Prince’s Purple Rain and the “Saturday Night Fever” soundtrack.
Final sales figures for the week will be released Wednesday morning.
