Adele's 21 logs its 21st week at #1 on The Billboard 200, which is the longest that any album has remained on top since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking sales for Billboard in 1991. The album sold 730,000 copies in its 52nd week, which is more than any album has sold this deep into its chart run. It blows past a record set nine years ago by Norah Jones' Come Away With Me, which sold 621K in its 53rd week in March 2003. Both albums owed their late surges to a Grammy sweep. Jones won five awards; Adele won six.

Other factors fueling Adele's surge: a 60 Minutes profile that preceded the Grammys, Valentine's Day gift-giving and a string of three straight #1 singles.

[Photo: Mike Marsland/Wireimage]Adele's 21 this week breaks the record for the longest run at #1 by a female artist since The Billboard 200 album chart became a weekly feature in 1956. 21 logs its 21st week on top with a Grammy-fueled sales tally of 730,000 copies. The old record was held by Whitney Houston, whose The Bodyguard soundtrack held the top spot for 20 weeks in 1992-1993.

Adele is starting to close in on another record that Houston has held since 1986: the longest run at #1 on Billboard's Top Music Videos chart by a female artist. Adele's Live At The Royal Albert Hall is about to log its 12th week at #1. Houston's The #1 Video Hits held the top spot for 22 weeks in 1986. (More about that later.)

[Photo: John Shearer/WireImage]The sophomore slump is real. Just ask such short-lived phenomena as Vanilla Ice and Men at Work. But it certainly hasn't affected Adele, whose sophomore album 21 logs its 21th week at #1 on The Billboard 200. That puts the album in a tie with M.C. Hammer's 1990 album Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em for the longest run at #1 by any artist's sophomore album.

Sixteen sophomore releases have logged seven or more weeks at #1 since The Billboard 200 became a weekly feature in 1956. It's easy to see why so many sophomore albums have done so well. Having an album under their belts, the artists are warmed up. Their creative juices are flowing. They know what they're doing in the studio, but still have a lot to prove.

Madonna-2-15-12Just 10 days have passed since Madonna's Super Bowl performance, but it seems long ago. We've since absorbed the shock of Whitney Houston's death and the impact of Adele's coronation at the Grammys. "Give Me All Your Luvin'," which Madonna performed with guests Nicki Minaj and M.I.A. in her half-time show, jumps from #13 to #10 in its second week on the Hot 100. This is Madonna's first top 10 hit since "4 Minutes" (featuring Justin Timberlake) ended an 11-week run in June 2008.

This nearly four-year gap between top 10 hits is the longest dry spell of Madonna's career. Her previous longest gap between top 10 hits came between her James Bond theme "Die Another Day," which peaked at #8 in November 2002, and her dance hit "Hung Up," which peaked at #7 in December 2005.

[Photo:Kevin Winter/Getty Images]Adele's 21 tops The Billboard 200 for the 20th week. This enables it to tie Whitney Houston's The Bodyguard soundtrack as the longest-running #1 album since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking sales for Billboard in 1991. That is a remarkable coincidence, since Houston died on Saturday, just one day before the end of this tracking week.

This is the seventh consecutive week at #1 for 21. It's the first album to log seven straight weeks at #1 since Taylor Swift's Fearless three years ago.

The album sold 88K digital copies this week, which pushes its digital total over the 2 million mark. It's the first album to sell 2 million digital copies. (The first album to sell 1 million was Eminem's Recovery, just last July.)

[Photo: Tony Barson/WireImage]A total of 22 Whitney Houston hits appear on the top 200 Hot Digital Songs chart in the wake of her death.  Her iconic version of "I Will Always Love You," which was sung by Jennifer Hudson on the Grammys on Sunday, was Houston's top song in the wake of her death (as it was in her lifetime). It ranks #3 for the week. In addition, six Houston albums re-enter The Billboard 200. Her top-ranking title is her 2000 compilation The Greatest Hits, which bows at #6.

By comparison, Michael Jackson charted with 49 songs and 14 albums in the week after his death in June 2009 (counting his work with the Jackson 5). But Jackson died on a Thursday, so he had three full days to ring up sales. (Nielsen SoundScan's tracking week ends Sunday night.) Houston died on a Saturday, so she had just one full day to ring up sales.

(photo: Kevin Mazur/WireImage)It's strange, but somehow fitting, that Whitney Houston died the day before the Grammy Awards. Houston was, for many years, a Grammy queen. In February 1986, when Houston was just 22, she sang her #1 hit "Saving All My Love For You" on the telecast, and moments later won her first Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female. (The presenter was her cousin Dionne Warwick, which undoubtedly made the moment all the sweeter for her.)

Close your eyes and you'd swear it was 1987. Madonna has the top new entry on this week's Hot 100 with "Give Me All Your Luvin," which she performed at the Super Bowl with Nicki Minaj and the irrepressible M.I.A. And five Michael Jackson songs enter the Hot 100, albeit in their Glee cover versions from last week's MJ salute. The highest-ranking is "Smooth Criminal," which pops on at #26.

"Give Me All Your Luvin'" sold 115K copies, which allows it to enter Hot Digital Songs at #7. That's not bad considering it had just three days to amass sales. But it's not great either, given that about 1,000 times that many people watched Madonna perform the song at the Super Bowl. In truth, we may need a few weeks to see if this is going to make it in a big way or not.