I think Adele herself and the singles from it have had far more of a cultural impact than the actual album, the only real impact that's had is the records it's broken. If you compare it to 'Sgt. Peppers', 'Morning Glory' or 'Thriller', it's ridiculous, pretty much every single song on all of those albums were massive in their own way, even people that don't like the artists or want to buy the albums know most of the songs such was the impact of all of the music on it whilst with '21' that's really not the case at all. Tony said it best in the last thread on this subject, just three weeks ago!

 

I've never owned the album and Hey Now is the only one I couldn't hum. I would say the album is familiar to millions.

 

 

I'm the same. I wasn't alive when 'Thriller' was out and I have even less interest in MJs music than I have Adele's, yet I could sing a long to almost all of 'Thriller', I can't even name the titles of over half of the tracks on '21' let alone know how they go.

I think Adele herself and the singles from it have had far more of a cultural impact than the actual album, the only real impact that's had is the records it's broken. If you compare it to 'Sgt. Peppers', 'Morning Glory' or 'Thriller', it's ridiculous, pretty much every single song on all of those albums were massive in their own way, even people that don't like the artists or want to buy the albums know most of the songs such was the impact of all of the music on it whilst with '21' that's really not the case at all. Tony said it best in the last thread on this subject, just three weeks ago!

I'm the same. I wasn't alive when 'Thriller' was out and I have even less interest in MJs music than I have Adele's, yet I could sing a long to almost all of 'Thriller', I can't even name the titles of over half of the tracks on '21' let alone know how they go.

Tbf though, in the case of Thriller, most of the album was released as singles whereas '21' has had only 3 so far... I wouldn't say 21 has less 'impact' purely because she's released less of it.

I suppose that's true. I guess I used Thriller because it's the one furthest removed from my typical taste. When I first heard Sgt. Peppers in full I knew exactly half of it, yet none of it was ever released. Anyone who was born before Morning Glory was released would almost certainly at least recognise the likes of Champagne Supernova and She's Electric.

 

However it's pointless trying to compare any of these albums anyway really. They're all so different in terms of era and musical style that none really compare. You have the likes of 21 and Morning Glory with the standard 3-4 singles, Thriller where almost the entire album was a single and Dark Side and Sgt. Peppers that never had any singles taken from them. It's easy to say Adele has done it in a lower sales climate in such a short time making it more impressive but given the price of albums now is it really surprising? When I first started buying albums in the mid-late 90s if you bought an album for under a tenner you'd got a good deal, now who on earth pays more than £10 for an album?! If the price of music had risen like the cost of other things you should really be paying just under £20 for a CD album now, and still a lot of people say they don't buy more because it's 'too expensive'.

 

However apart from Oasis all of the others will have had multi-format buys. How many people who bought some of these as youngsters will have replaced them with CD or mp3 versions to go with the record versions they bought when they were orignally out? I know you get people who 'buy a copy for the car' and other similar rubbish nowadays but it'd be nowhere near as many. But then music is so much easier to buy these days. You can buy it on any format in your own house, ill in bed, watching TV, whatever. If you have the right gadget and right app you can buy it in the car stuck in traffic or the bus to work. The rest of these albums came in an era when you had to go to a record shop to buy it. People now also have far more disposable income than they've ever done before, but they also have more choice, both in terms of what music to buy (you can now buy almost any song ever made) and anything else. There's also the absolute population to consider. The population is 10-15% higher than when some of the other massive sellers were released.

I don't think it was, back to bedlam, spirit and back to black have proven that modern albums can get clost to the top 10 at least. I mean Back to Black is only just over 2 million short of the record in itself, so it was never completely impossible. Recent music has often done better in the album chart than in the singles chart, I mean is anything recent EVER going to break Candle In The Wind's record????

 

A Susan Boyle charity single released in response to the death of a young Kate Middleton?

I still can't believe how much this album has actually sold. Its very over-rated in my opinion with only about half the songs on the album which are actually really good. I think she's been very lucky and released the right singles from the release and had excellent promotion.

I think this Album's success has several factors;

 

1. The Album's Story: Its an album about a really bitter breakup with someone who she thought was her Mr Right and how it really tore her up, a lot of people can relate to that and as she's such a down to earth person its just captured the imagination of the public even more. There isn't many other albums that have been released lately that can say they have done that.

 

2. Delivery: Ok anyone can write a powerful break up song or sing one with a good voice but Adele really belts out these songs, particularly on RITD and you can hear the emotion coming into the song and with Someone Like You. The Brits performance is another perfect example where she had to fight back tears at the end of the song because it was so personal to her and she really connected with the song, not many artists can do that and sound convincing and she did in front of Millions of people.

 

3. Plus in an era where all music is just this generic mix of dance/rap/r'n'b/electric/pop that all sounds the same and repetitive, its almost made it unique in that sense.

 

She's had more of an impact than i think people will realise, she's proved you don't have to go on a stupid talent contest to become successful, nor have someone write you your songs but that you can become a star in your own right no matter how you look and have a greater success and that's what people will find inspiring.

 

The timing and promotion of the Albums release also helped with it having an entire calender year ahead of it and mothers day of course.

 

Still i think its brilliant and fascinating that an Album released in this day and age has managed to do this well it is incredible.

Adele's '21' has now outsold Dire Straits 'Brothers In Arms' Album, in the UK.

So it is now the 6th Best Selling Album in the UK, & the 4th Best Selling Studio

Album. To Midnight last Night, its UK Sales were over 4,158,000. It is now just

114,000 Sales behind Michael Jackson's 'Thriller', which is the 5th Best Seller.

 

From The OCC Site - Friday 23rd March 2012:,

 

21 has now sold over 4.15 million copies since its release in January of last year; to put this in perspective, one in six British households now owns the album.

 

The Top 10 biggest selling albums of all-time in the UK are now as follows. Please note, updated sales figures won’t be published until next Monday when this

chart week’s sales have been finalised.

 

01 GREATEST HITS – QUEEN

02 SGT PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND – THE BEATLES

03 GOLD: GREATEST HITS – ABBA

04 (WHAT'S THE STORY) MORNING GLORY? – OASIS

05 THRILLER - MICHAEL JACKSON

06 21 – ADELE

07 BROTHERS IN ARMS - DIRE STRAITS

08 THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON - PINK FLOYD

09 BAD - MICHAEL JACKSON

10 GREATEST HITS II – QUEEN

Edited March 23, 201213 yr by zeus555

:nono: Not happy about this.

I really like Brothers in Arms.

I think it's time for her reign to come to an end now <_<

cant believe this. How has she got this far no offence but imo shes not that good. She only gets as far as she does probably because she buys the albums herself or eats them.

Edited March 23, 201213 yr by pwned

It does show the highest selling albums, but it also shows what an incredible achievement it is to even be on that top 10 list, let alone climbing it in the 21st Century where illegal downloading is so much more prominant. Its incredile to see.

I always thought "Bad" outsold "Thriller" in this country for some reason.

I always thought "Bad" outsold "Thriller" in this country for some reason.

 

In the 2006 all time list:

 

8. Michael Jackson, Thriller (3,570,250)

9. Michael Jackson, Bad (3,549,950)

 

So I guess there might have been a time when Bad was ahead of Thriller.

By the end of the 80s Bad had out sold Thriller but Thriller has had stronger trickle sales since then and was re-issued to greater effect than Bad had (if Bad was re-issued at all)

Overall I'm not a massive fan of the album, it has a lot of forgetful tracks in my opinion. BUT I disagree about the cultural impact - all you need to do is watch her royal albert hall performance of 'Someone Like You' to realise the cultural impact she has had, especially in the UK

 

 

 

I can't quite see what "cultural impact" that performance had - yes it's sold a lot of records but outside that, in general cultural terms?

Just a thought, does the total given by the OCC for 'Thriller' include the sales of 'Thriller 25'? If so surely '21' should rightfully already be ahead as 'Thriller 25' continues to chart separately from 'Thriller' (or at least it does as of 2009) so it doesn't really make much sense to combine the two together. For similar reasons surely Queen's GHII could still be behind Madonna if you exclude boxset sales - and GH(I) should have a much lesser lead over The Beatles. Well, the Queen situation is different I guess because in the boxsets the albums are exactly the same as they are as separate albums.

 

I can't quite see what "cultural impact" that performance had - yes it's sold a lot of records but outside that, in general cultural terms?

 

Maybe not cultural but Adele's performance at the BRITs led pretty much directly to the dying down of 'club bangers' in the chart. If one single performance can change the entire musical environment of the charts it's a pretty big deal surely?

 

The real test of 21's significance will come in a few years anyway, it's still relatively new and hard to judge if it truly deserves this popularity. I'd imagine some people must have said at the time about some of the other albums on this list that they don't deserve their place, but now it's pretty much universally agreed that they do deserve their places.

Edited March 23, 201213 yr by Bréyhound

I can't quite see what "cultural impact" that performance had - yes it's sold a lot of records but outside that, in general cultural terms?

 

In general cultural terms it is a song that has defined a generation in dealing with break ups.

The real test of 21's significance will come in a few years anyway, it's still relatively new and hard to judge if it truly deserves this popularity. I'd imagine some people must have said at the time about some of the other albums on this list that they don't deserve their place, but now it's pretty much universally agreed that they do deserve their places.

 

So true. It could be #1 in a few years, and it will be deserved.

By the end of the 80s Bad had out sold Thriller but Thriller has had stronger trickle sales since then and was re-issued to greater effect than Bad had (if Bad was re-issued at all)

Indeed so. Bad had built up a lead of about 500k by the end of the 80s but "Thriller" sold much better year after year and adding in sales of "Thriller 25" had sent it well clear.

 

The real test of 21's significance will come in a few years anyway, it's still relatively new and hard to judge if it truly deserves this popularity. I'd imagine some people must have said at the time about some of the other albums on this list that they don't deserve their place, but now it's pretty much universally agreed that they do deserve their places.

Paul Gmabaccini always allows five years before you can begin to see how well songs/ albums stand up in popular opinion nad influence on music culture so we'll see I guess.

Apparently Tony Blackburn is counting down the UK's biggest selling albums on Easter Monday on Radio 2 which should put a bit more flesh on the bones for us. No more details yet.

Indeed so. Bad had built up a lead of about 500k by the end of the 80s but "Thriller" sold much better year after year and adding in sales of "Thriller 25" had sent it well clear.

Paul Gmabaccini always allows five years before you can begin to see how well songs/ albums stand up in popular opinion nad influence on music culture so we'll see I guess.

It'll probably still be in the top 40 then :lol: