is water wet?

Britney clears.

It's Adele, the fact she sold 56M album without lifting a finger or needed to be the "i'm the most popular celebrity in the world" kind of gimmick.. says it all...

3 hours ago, VioletsandRoses said:

Single sales

BOMT-12.6m

21-59.3m

Adele BY FARRR and not only Adele, so many others

21 alone-57m units

BOMT+Oops- 59m units

25-35.7m units

It's not even close lol…

Adele outsold her competition by 3:1 while Britney was getting outsold by Alanis, Celine, Shania, and so on

britney stans always use "vibes" to scale how successful their fave was and stick with it, when irl Adele did way more in term of sales, charts, popularity, streams etc without even lifting a finger

Commercially Adele absolutely wins, each album was a mega mega smash hit and so were her singles

She didn't have just a 3 or a Womaniser, she had a Hello and Easy on me

Rolling in the deep absolutely destroys Toxic

Recently there was a thread about Britney never having a UK number 1 album and that says it all

Culturally Britney is one of the most talked about women ever so she clearly wins this one

Adele was the Taylor of the early 10s, outselling everyone x5, she was leagues above any male or female artist at the time, she definitely dominated commercially over others in a way Britney didn't

But Britney was obviously more (in)famous during her peak, Adele was less of a celebrity

Commercial: Adele

Cultural: no one even comes close to Spears

Britney ... Both

Not that Britney stan bringing up Xtina because that's where their mind goes when they have zero arguments

Adele. She was selling albums like it was the 1970s in the digital single era and streaming era.

Commercially it's Adele and it's not even close

Britney Spears was famous for the all the wrong reasons and we see how it ended nowdays

Culturally Britney was easily bigger but in terms of numbers Adele was destroying everybody...

Commercially it was Adele. No one was doing numbers like her and in 2011 mind yoy. the 3 britney fans who say otherwise are more deluded than I thought

There's absolutely no case to be made for Britney having a bigger commercial peak, ESPECIALLY contextually. But Adele takes it outright too, even when competing against Britney's much more favorable market conditions.

Culturally Britney will obviously win the poll on ATRL. But most of the world isn't engaged with pop culture like us. Even when artists are in the absolute center of the zeitgeist, that will only be true of the people who pay attention to pop culture. For people who pay attention to pop culture, Britney absolutely had a bigger cultural footprint and peak (though this is also half negative publicity). For people overall, Adele easily takes as the numbers very obviously show.

People struggle seeing beyond their personal experience/bias on here. That's why they can always fall back on the old vibes standby when the numbers don't shake out. How can you dispute whether it feels like someone was bigger culturally? You can't, it's unique to all of us. The percentage of people who pay close attention to pop culture is smaller than people realize. It just feels huge because we care so much and people who do are so vocal about it. Most people don't!

You also are influenced by your own demographic and circles. To southerners in the USA, Morgan Wallen probably feels like the most famous artist in history .

Edited May 21May 21 by DevilsRollTheDice

On 5/22/2026 at 12:05 AM, DevilsRollTheDice said:

There's absolutely no case to be made for Britney having a bigger commercial peak, ESPECIALLY contextually. But Adele takes it outright too, even when competing against Britney's much more favorable market conditions.

Culturally Britney will obviously win the poll on ATRL. But most of the world isn't engaged with pop culture like us. Even when artists are in the absolute center of the zeitgeist, that will only be true of the people who pay attention to pop culture. For people who pay attention to pop culture, Britney absolutely had a bigger cultural footprint and peak (though this is also half negative publicity). For people overall, Adele easily takes as the numbers very obviously show.

People struggle seeing beyond their personal experience/bias on here. That's why they can always fall back on the old vibes standby when the numbers don't shake out. How can you dispute whether it feels like someone was bigger culturally? You can't, it's unique to all of us. The percentage of people who pay close attention to pop culture is smaller than people realize. It just feels huge because we care so much and people who do are so vocal about it. Most people don't!

You also are influenced by your own demographic and circles. To southerners in the USA, Morgan Wallen probably feels like the most famous artist in history .

I would agree with you except that Britney absolutely had moments that escaped the popculture crowd, everybody knows about BOMT and her shaving her head/having a breakdown. Those moments of her true celebrity peak very much got into every household

Adele x 2

On 5/20/2026 at 10:32 PM, BossAngell said:

Eminem is ALSO bigger than Adele, lol ! 🤣🤣🤣🤣💀

Nope.

In a much worse sales climate, 21 sold 30+ million globally while MMLP sold 20+ million at the peak of record sales in the early 00's.