After a three-year hiatus, Adele is back with a big "Hello," which is her new single that has been shattering records since it was released the other week.
In addition to dethroning Taylor Swift's "Bad Blood" for the most views on the first day of release, "Hello" now holds the honor of being the first and only single to sell over a million digital copies on its first week of release and sets the bar for the best-selling week for any single.
The previous record holder at 636,000 was the 2009 hit "Right Round" by Flo Rida. "Hello" almost doubled "Right Round's" numbers and charted 1.112 million downloads in the U.S. a week after it debuted. It also charted 259,000 downloads in the U.K. and another 35,000 in Australia.
Along with the colossal number of sales, "Hello" also topped the Billboard Hot 100. The single, which is the introductory track of Adele's third and upcoming album, "25," is Adele's fourth single to sit atop the Billboard Top 100. Three singles, "Rolling in the Deep," "Someone Like You", and "Set Fire to the Rain", from her previous album, "21," have all been to the top of the Hot 100 chart.
"This song was a massive breakthrough for me with my writing because it'd been pretty slow up to this point, and I felt after I worked with Greg Kurstin on this, it all poured right out of me," Adele tells SiriusXM, Beats Radio 1.
Aside from the downloads, "Hello" also listed itself as one of the most streamed singles during the debut week. According to Billboard, with 61.6 million streams a week after its release, "Hello" comes second to Baauer's "Harlem Shake." The streaming figure accounts for various streaming media and portals.
Moreover, Billboard adds that "Hello" also set a record for most on-demand streams of a single by charting 20.4 million streams from subscribers of on-demand platforms. At the moment of writing, "Hello's" music video on VEVO has more than 201 million views. You can make that counter tick faster by viewing the video below.
