According to Neilsen SoundScan (the official source of record sales in the music industry since 1991), the top ten best-selling albums for each of the first 12 years of the 21st century do not contain a single jazz album. Even worse, as a result, Americans seem to be increasingly ignorant of what jazz is. The top-selling album of 2011 and 2012 was Adele's "21." She has far outsold every other artist. I am amazed at how many times I have heard someone call her a "jazz artist." Do these people have ANY IDEA of what jazz is?? If not (and they obviously don't), why do they say that?? I have listened to several Adele songs on Youtube and not one of them is even jazz-flavored pop much less jazz. I suppose she's a decent enough artist, it's not anything I would care to buy, but she is simply NOT jazz or even remotely jazz.

Interesting also that in 2011, bassist Esperanza Spalding became the first "jazz" artist to win the Best New Artist award at the Grammy's in spite of the fact that Spalding had not released a jazz album in three years. She was given the award so that the Grammy committee could have an excuse not to award Justin Bieber whom Spalding had beaten out which enraged many of Bieber's fans. Spalding had not sold enough albums to rate in the top ten for any year while Bieber had done so from 2010 to 2012 so perhaps Bieber's fanbase had a right to be angry.

The album that the Grammy people seemed to be recognizing Spalding for was "Chamber Music Society" released the previous year. It was also rated as the number one jazz album but is not jazz but more of jazz-flavored pop. Spalding repeated the feat in 2012 with "Radio Music Society." Again, this album is not jazz. Ironically, the last jazz album Spalding released, "Esperanza" (2008), never got higher than #3. Her debut album, "Junjo" (2006), also jazz, sold so few copies that it was never rated. The first two releases, however, featured some impressive jazz chops imaginatively displayed. Spalding demonstrated that she was a formidable jazz artist who might well "take it to the next level." However, her next two releases saw her basswork take a backseat to her vocalizing.

Spalding is used by the Grammy people as a way to block other artists that it clearly considers more important (because they sell more records) if they nevertheless view said artists as being musically "vapid", shall we say. In this way, jazz is done a grave disservice. Indeed, Spalding has continued to make her name as a jazz artist in spite of not releasing a jazz recording in five years at the time of this writing (2013). For instance, Spalding won Jazz Artist of the year in 2011 at the Boston Music Awards and took Best Jazz Vocal Album at the Grammys in 2013. The last award is telling for she did not win for her bass-playing but for her vocals. We are free to assume that had she released an instrumental album, she may not have received any recognition at all since this is true of all the other jazz instrumentalists. Dave Holland and Eddie Gomez are two of the most awesome bassists in the world but both do instrumental jazz. So how many Grammys has either man won in the many years both have been recording? Combined together, the answer is none. Spalding also won another award at the 2013 Grammys that had nothing do with jazz: Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalists—a category as meaningless as it is confusing—for the song "City of Roses."