Did Adele save music?

Adele’s “21” is a good album.

“Someone Like You” is as tear-jerking as its reputation suggests; “Rolling in the Deep” as vicious; “Set Fire to the Rain” as classy. The record contains 48 minutes of solid, if unremarkable, female vocal pop.

“21” has also sold more than 17 million copies worldwide and sits at the top of the Billboard 200 list nearly a year after its release, annihilating the sales of albums with far bigger PR campaigns, such as Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” (8 million copies) and Jay-Z and Kanye West’s “Watch the Throne” (1.5 million copies).

This has some optimists calling it the savior of the music industry.

To an extent, they’re right. “21” is the biggest album to come out in the era of a ubiquitous iTunes store and, more crucially, the era of unmitigated illegal downloading.
For people who think the only way the music industry can thrive is via the hubristic excesses of the major record labels, “21” is a godsend.

But in a world where online social networks have pervaded listening habits to an unavoidable degree and the lion’s share of power is in the hands of the fans — that is, the world we actually live in — Adele’s mega-success represents something else entirely.

Rewind to 1978. A competent cover of the Kinks’ “You Really Got Me” is getting significant airplay, but its lead-in is a curiosity. A Dutch guitarist named Eddie Van Halen plays a squealing, almost atonal guitar solo for two minutes using techniques never heard before, dubs it “Eruption” and insists that it be included as a part of his eponymous band’s single release.

No one has ever heard anything like this before, and the debut album it comes from sells between 14 million and 18 million copies worldwide.

Fast forward to 1991, when the airwaves have come to be dominated by watered-down versions of Van Halen’s once-novel formula. A bummed-out Seattleite called Kurt Cobain cuts “Nevermind” with his band Nirvana. This is a radical album that attempts to put the final nail in the hairspray-‘n’-leather coffin. It sells 30 million copies.

Twenty years later, a handful of 2011 albums will carry similar significance to the music world as “Van Halen” and “Nevermind.”

Albums like PJ Harvey’s “Let England Shake,” Bon Iver’s “Bon Iver, Bon Iver” and Fucked Up’s “David Comes to Life” spur endless critical discussions, both online and off.

They top year-end lists at various major publications. They matter in the wider scope, and most people who actively consume music agree that they matter.

They also continue to sell like shit.

The top 10 albums of 2011 according to Pitchfork have sold a combined 1.9 million copies in the U.S. That’s about one-third as many copies as “21” sold in the United States in 2011.

Perhaps it should go without saying that it appears nowhere on Pitchfork’s top 50.
What the outlandish sales figures for “21” mean isn’t that the music industry is saved. It’s that it’s different.

The formula for putting out a huge record in an era where soccer moms know how to use the iTunes store is to write good songs that are unfailingly subservient to the canon.

If “Nevermind” came out of the same teased-hair wasteland that it did in 1991 in today’s market, it would be SPIN’s favorite album of the year but sell half as many copies as U2’s “Achtung Baby.”

This certainly doesn’t mean doom and gloom. Album sales in 2011 were up in the United States for the first time since 2004.

The digital model is finally starting to work. But as more and more casual listeners become proficient with purchasing music in a digital world, the gulf between critically important releases and big sellers will continue to widen.

The title of “21” matters. It’s a number, and numbers are what the album will contribute to the popular music discussion in 2012.

When we look back at it on the eve of the release of Adele’s “42,” we’ll remember it as a beacon for record sales in an era that could never really define itself by them.

What we won’t remember “21” as, however, is a musical game-changer, and ultimately, those will always matter more.