Now that the 2016 Grammy Awards are over, people already are beginning to talk about the 2017 Grammys. Taylor Swift may have been the star of this year’s show after becoming the first woman to win a second Album of the Year award, but Adele is already predicted to win multiple awards for 25, which has already sold seven million albums. But 25’s popularity doesn’t guarantee a big win on Grammy night, it is actually rare for a given album to be both the bestselling album of the year and bring home a Grammy.

Although this may seem ludicrous, few Grammy-winning albums were also best sellers. Since the Grammy awards began in 1959, only 12 of the winners of Album of the Year (or 20%) were best sellers. Lil Wayne, Eminem, and Justin Timberlake are all examples of people whose albums were best sellers, but did not win a Grammy for Album of the Year. Taylor Swift was not simply one of the few to have a best selling album win a Grammy, but she was the only one to do it twice. She did this with her album Fearless in 2009 and 1989 in 2016 which were both best sellers.

Even fewer bestselling songs won Grammys. Only 12 bestselling songs won either Song of the Year or Record of the Year or both. Less than 16% of Song of the Year winners were best sellers and roughly 12% of Record of the Year winners were best sellers. What is also odd is that there were 28 times where a song brought home Song of the Year and Record of the Year. Out of those 28 songs, only 4 of them were bestsellers, which proved to be less than 15%. That means roughly 85% of winners of both Song of the Year and Record of the Year have not been bestsellers.

The fact that the top winners usually don’t sell an immense amount is surprising, but what does it all mean? First, it indicates that the general populace doesn’t usually have the same opinions as the music experts. The other notion to consider is that the Grammy Awards are completely independent of sales. Contestants are judged on their music alone and not sales, youtube likes, or billboard statistics. Despite the fact that the populace and the experts seem to have some conflicting opinions on the best music, Adele’s 25 has received stellar expert reviews and is critically proclaimed as extraordinary. So if Adele’s 25 takes home multiple Grammys in 2017, it would be for its music quality and not for its formidable sales.