Adele announces tour for new album in Europe

As her album shatters sales records in the United States and the United Kingdom, British pop superstar Adele Thursday announced her first tour in four years -- though each of its 36 dates is in Europe.

The 10-time Grammy Award-winner and Best Song Oscar-winner commences the tour with a pair of Belfast concerts on Feb. 29 and March 1. Subsequent dates include stops in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Scandinavia, Germany, Switzerland, Portugal, Spain, Italy and The Netherlands. She winds down June 9 and 10 at the AccorHotels Arena in Paris -- where U2 had postponed concerts following the city's terror attack earlier this month -- and June 12 and 13 at the Sportpaleis in Antwerp, Belgium. The tour takes a monthlong break after a March 30 show in Birmingham, England.

Adele, born Adele Adkin, 27, also posted a jocular Facebook video Thursday in which she stands before a map of Europe and gamely tries several times to deliver a message, often cracking up in laughter.

"Hello, Happy Friday!" she begins, then reacts to someone correcting her. "Oh, it's Thursday? It's going out tomorrow?" she asks, suggesting the video was shot Wednesday. After three more aborted takes, she gets to the meat of the message: "Hello, it's me, I have been bluffing this whole time and I'm so relieved to finally tell you that I am, of course, coming on tour and I can't wait to see all of you there, so see you all very, very soon!"

Moments later, she uses a pointer to indicate tour stops on the map. When the light-up tip does not always glow, she laughs and jokes, "It's hard work being Harry Potter!"

Adele's third studio album, "25," has broken one-week sales records since its release last Friday. Nielsen Music said Thursday that the album had sold 3 million copies in United States, far outpacing the previous one-week record-holder, "No Strings Attached" by 'NSYNC in 2000. The U.K. data-compiler Official Charts said "25" broke her home country's record, previously held by Oasis' "Be Here Now," with the caveat through a scheduling quirk; that 1997 album only had three days of its first week count toward the record.