Adele Breaks Records

After a long hiatus for the artist, Columbia records released Adele’s new album “25” today.

There has been a nearly five-year delay since the release of her previous effort “21,” which has sold 30 million copies worldwide. According to the singer, the gap was due to a period of writer’s block during which she feared she had lost her ability to write songs. Yet the release of “Hello,” the album’s first single, has proven that the public is hungry for new Adele music.

Along with Greg Kurstin, who co-wrote the song with her and produced it, Adele has touched the hearts of people all over the world with “Hello.” The soul-influenced pop song is widely acclaimed by critics as one that does truly connect to people’s souls. The song reached 165,000 sales in the United Kingdom just three days after its release and is a great leap of achievement.

“Hello” became the Number One single in over 26 countries, debuting atop the Billboard 100 while becoming the first song with over a million US digital sales in a week and the fastest video clip to reach a million views on the VEVO Youtube channel. Billboard reported on Wednesday that Columbia would be shipping 3.6 million copies of the album, making it the biggest physical shipment in the download era and putting it in competition with *NSYNC’s 2000 album “No Strings Attached” for the all-time record for first-week sales.

In an interview with JSR, Valencia High School junior Eunice Rhee stated, “I think the appeal of Adele lies in how emotionally connected she makes us feel to her. When I first heard ‘Hello,’ I heard the raw emotion in her voice and I automatically attributed the song to certain moments in my life.”

Earlier this month, Valencia’s Vivian Hayashi told JSR, “I absolutely cannot wait until ‘25’ comes out. I’m sure that it’ll be equally as good as ‘Hello,’ or more soul-wrenching.”