What was Jethro Tull’s best-selling album?
To fully understand Jethro Tull, you need to have an appreciation for the music which inspired them and convinced them to start making the music that they did. Their ideas didn’t just come out of the sky; rock had to be undergoing a shift, both in terms of culture and sound. Without this shift, we likely wouldn’t have the diverse range of albums attached to Jethro Tull that we so often celebrate.
One of the first bands we need to give credit to is Cream. In an interview, Ian Anderson once praised them as being one of the bands which opened the door for prog rock. Whether they were conscious of it or not, their attitude towards making music was hugely influential, as it showed bands they didn’t need to stay within the realms of standard rock, and they could instead embrace other styles in the process.
Led Zeppelin had a similar impact on Anderson, but instead of showing him how to embrace different genres, they showed him how to embrace other cultures with their music. Sound doesn’t need a border, as people were beginning to realise towards the back end of the ‘60s, as music was proving to be a sonic gateway to places like India and Africa, whose influences could be heard in a lot of contemporary music.
“I think what they showed to all their peer group as musicians was that there was, first of all, a very powerful and dramatic way to perform simple, direct rock music and also to introduce elements of more eclectic music,” said Anderson when discussing Led Zeppelin’s influence. “Because Zeppelin, near the beginning, there were a lot of elements of folk music, and Asian music, and African music that crept into their stuff.”
These two bands were a huge influence on Jethro Tull, as they made it so that the only rules surrounding the music they made was that they didn’t have to follow any rules. Any genre or style was open for Jethro Tull, and they took full advantage of that, as they very much kept rock at the centre of what they did, but were also never afraid to embrace a whole range of styles when putting music together.
This means that when you listen to Jethro Tull, you get to experience a range of different styles and sounds. No two albums sound the same, and there really is a record out there for everyone. So, it begs the question, with such a massive range of variety available, which of Jethro Tull’s albums was the best-selling?
What was Jethro Tull’s best-selling album?
While there is a great deal of variety available throughout Jethro Tull’s discography, it won’t come as a surprise to many fans that their best-selling album is 1971’s Aqualung. The record is widely considered one of the band’s very best, as it has hard guitar lines, excellent flute instrumentation, and touches upon themes that appear timeless in their importance.
Ian Anderson once spoke about the continued interest in Aqualung and theorised it’s because of the political commentary on the record that it remains timeless. The album talks in great detail about homelessness and poverty.
“I believe the sentiments of the song are as obvious now as they were in 1971 because the issue of homeless people hasn’t gone away,” he said. “You still see them everywhere. In the 1950s and ’60s, we called them tramps, but they were harmless. Now, as so many are on the streets due to drug problems or sexual exploitation, it has become, if anything, more worrying. All of which makes ‘Aqualung’ so relevant.”
