Photo: WENN.com
Adele's 21 has been named the biggest-selling album in Americain 2012 - for the second year running.
The album, released in 2011, sold a massive 4.4million copies in the US in 2012, following its sales of 5.8million in 2011. It is the first time since Nielsen Soundscan began tracking yearly album sales in 1991 that the same album has been the year's biggest seller two years in a row.
Adele leads the Top Five - of which four albums are by British artists. American star Taylor Swift is the second biggest US seller, with her Red album shifting 3.1million copies, One Direction place third with 1.6million sales of Up All Night, Mumford & Sons' Babel is ranked fourth with 1.5million sales and One Direction also claim the No.5 spot, with Take Me Home sales of 1.3million.
Keith Caulfield, Billboard magazine's associate director of charts spoke of Adele's stateside success, saying: "It's a sort of a once-in-a-lifetime album - only a few of these albums come along in history," he said.
"She really crossed over from pop to Latin to adult contemporary to dance. Young and old consumers bought it, and because of its mixture of fans, she was able to sell it as well as she did."
21 was the biggest selling album for the second year in a row
However, Adele's success comes as American music sales dip, with numbers dropping by 4% to 316million in 2012. Single sales rose however, with 1.3billion tracks downloaded in 2012.
Similar to UK sales, Gotye's 'Somebody That I Used To Know' was the most downloaded track in America, and Carly Rae Jepsen's 'Call Me Maybe' was No.2.
Below: the biggest selling UK albums in 2012
