Five artists who’ve had far more commercial success than you’d ever realise
When tallying up the commercial fortunes of rock and pop’s biggest names, there’s often a mismatch between the mammoth sellers and their place in esteemed, critical consensus.
It’s no surprises that The Beatles confidently sit at the top spot, boasting just shy of 300million certified sales, but claimed units as high as 600m, with Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley respectively enjoying silver and bronze medal with their count well into 200m. But Elton John at fourth place? Really? Sure he’s a lauded artist with an acclaimed songbook, but would you have guessed the ‘Rocket Man’s’ dwelling in such a lofty sales stature?
One has to shake off the rockism that skews the musical lay of the land for many of a certain generation to avoid surprises. We all know Barbados pop sensation Rihanna is one of the world’s mega stars, but even the most committed poptimists may not quite have expected the ‘Umbrella’ singer to stand boldly as the eighth biggest-selling artists of all time, sitting atop a hefty over 411m certified sales. This is leagues above the likes of Aretha Franklin, who just nudges the league tables with a paltry 27m.
Music’s monster artists can chart an intriguing beeline around perceived good taste, through radio ubiquity, or the memory’s recollections of just exactly who were the cultural titans that spun the era’s essential soundtrack. Join us as we select, in ascending order, the gargantuan sales acts whose commercial successes make you go ‘What?!’
Five artists who’ve had unpreceedented commercial success:
Kiss
New York glam metallers Kiss occupy a funny space in the rock canon. Cutting their hard theatrical stomp well before the hairspray buffoonery that dominated the 1980s MTV rotations, Kiss conjured a genuinely fun and faintly edgy strut a decade prior. Donning their trademark greasepaint and enmeshing themselves in the era’s fantasy glitter, the band would score many a suburban kid’s heavy metal escapism, later namechecked by artists as diverse as Guns N’ Roses to Lady Gaga.
Yet, their evidently fine rock stompers gave way to dodgy disco, stodgy concept albums, and the infamous unmasking era. While sources point to merchandising sales alone peaking at a gobsmacking $1billion in revenue, Kiss plastering their name and likeness on a mountain of licensed ventures from official Kiss Kasket coffins to their very own sugar-frosted Kiss Krunch breakfast cereal, the hard rock survivors count over 21m certified record sales under their demonic emblemed codpiece.
Kenny G
The hideous, beige ooze that cloys all over saxophonist Kenny G’s smooth jazz mediocrity is perfectly illustrated in Wayne’s World 2, when metalhead Garth Algar is nightmarishly seized via the traumatic slow pan across a dismally pastel-shirted audience delighting in Kenny G’s glossy muzak, pausing on Garth, terrified and affixed to a dentist chair. It’s the perfect vignette of Kenny G’s effect, which is an exercise in excruciating pain and claustrophobia the moment one is exposed to his soggy keyboard piddles and trite brass melodies.
Yet, on he goes, releasing his 19th studio effort in 2023 with Innocence, becoming something of a musical hero in China, and eagerly sought by Kanye West to Imperial Triumphant for his sax services. Despite triggering derision in the jazz world, G’s laughing all the way to the bank, counting nearly 54m certified sales and standing as the genre’s most successful artist.
Garth Brooks
From one Garth to another, at best topped by Taylor Swift who abandoned her rootsy folk background years ago, Oklahoma’s Garth Brooks towers in the country sales by a country mile. Evoking the spirit of Nashville’s happy pull of the mainstream towards the South, Brooks embraced a wider appeal for his anthemic ballads, which may have rankled much of the country world’s Highwaymen purists, but he would be showered with unimaginable record nabs, standing as the 21st biggest-selling artists of all time, period.
Brooks seemingly doesn’t need to do much to earn shedloads. Boasting an over whopping 170m certified sales, the Tulsa twanger even managed to set records with as much as one million country fans flocking to New York’s Central Park to witness a free show, dubbed ‘Garthstock’ by his fans, making for quite the feat for a hardcore blue state. Even his failures do alright, the one record for his mocked rock alter-ego Chris Gaines sailing to a remarkable number two in the US album charts.
Céline Dion
No other artist dominates the ghastly adult-contemporary label like Québec’s ‘Queen of the Ballads’. Ever since winning 1988’s Eurovision Song Contest with ‘Ne partez pas sans moi’, glossy yodeller Céline Dion couldn’t put a foot wrong across the 1990s, with every single power ballad and billowy pop opera strangle selling ungodly levels, from her title track for Disney’s Beauty and the Beast to ‘My Heart Will Go On’s’ faux-Celtic melodrama for 1997’s Titanic, a single so utterly ubiquitous that her defining theme is only bested by Whitney Houston’s ‘I Will Always Love You’ cover five years prior as the greatest selling single by a female.
It’s a curious phenomena: an artist engulfed by a tsunami of record sales presenting a strange dilemma of never being able to recall knowing anyone in possession of any of her CDs. Still, the numbers don’t lie, with Dion counting a staggering 150m certified sales and standing as Canada’s biggest-selling artist of all time.
AC/DC
Before the Aussie clod rockers’ dedicated fanbase duckwalk over to the Far Out HQ in fury at expressing surprise at the proto-metallers explosive sales, first, we know that with numbers like ‘Highway to Hell’ and ‘TNT’ in the bag, AC/DC are rock royalty. It’s also understood that many of rock’s biggest names stand tall in the rock league sellers, with Metallica, Aerosmith, and Led Zeppelin all boasting hefty figures in the rankings.
But the 16th biggest selling of all time? It’s likely a surprise to even longtime fans, but AC/DC can confidently reel off over 188m certified sales, with as much as 200m claimed. The Young brothers’ basic formula of boiled down primal riffs and maintaining a lyrical arrested development for near 50 years paid off more than handsomely. 1980’s Back in Black alone fired off 70m in reported sales, still standing as the second biggest-selling album of all time behind Michael Jackson’s Thriller.
