- Who
- Adele
- Where
- United States ()
- When
Adele's (UK) 25 sold 3,378,000 first-week copies in the USA to debut at No.1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart on 12 December 2015, according to Nielsen Music. No other album in history has sold as many copies in a single country during its first week of release.
The record was previously held by Hikaru Utada (Japan, b. USA), whose third studio album, Distance, sold 3,002,720 copies in Japan in the week from 28 March 2001.
Japan has produced the second-, third- and fourth-fastest-selling albums: A Best (2001) by Ayumi Hamasaki (2,874,870 copies sold); The Best "Pleasure" (1998) by B'z (2,709,530) and The Best "Treasure" (1998) by B'z (2,500,120).
The second-fastest-selling album in the USA (and the fifth-fastest-selling album worldwide) is *NSync's 2000 set No Strings Attached (2,416,000 copies sold).