If the music industry’s biggest star in the last decade appeared on your show, you’d probably want to extend her stay as long as possible. Truth be told, Adele could sing the phone book, and it would generate ratings.
The British singer graced The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon for a second night in a row Tuesday, albeit in a taped segment. She followed up her performance of “Bridge Under the Water,” complete with a six-piece band and two back-up singers, with a surprisingly stripped-down version of her epic and sweeping ballad “Hello.”
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Backed by Fallon himself and the Roots, Adele crooned her worldwide No. 1 song to the backing of just classroom instruments, including a xylophone and a kazoo. And, if it wasn’t clear enough, the British singer proved she has a voice for the ages – no matter what the accompaniment. Adele also exhibited a sharp sense of humor, too. Poking fun at her already iconic music video, she spent part of the performance singing into a lime-green flip-phone.
The performance quickly emerged as a top trend on Facebook. A Facebook video posted by The Tonight Show’s verified account garnered just under 8 million views within the first nine hours of its posting. Adele finishes the video in a fit of laughter — but a performance that set social media by storm isn’t the only thing she has to be smiling about right now.
Billboard announced yesterday that Adele’s new album “25” had broken the 15-year-old record for most albums sold in a single week — and it did so in about three days’ time. (That’s a sales average of 9 copies per second, according to BBC News.) Previous record holder *NSYNC sold 2.4 million copies of “No Strings Attached” in its debut week in March of 2000. (Nielsen Music did not begin tracking sales until 1991.)
“25” is now forecast to sell an astounding 3 million copies in its first seven days, and it will end 2015 as the best-selling album of the year. Perhaps the overwhelmingly positive reaction to Adele’s Tonight Show performance will inspire the singer to release a remixed album scored entirely to classroom instruments. After all, it’s that once-in-a-generation voice her fans across the world can’t get enough of.
Joseph Neese