Jimmy Page - Led Zeppelin - Guitarist - 1970s

Credit: Far Out / APA Agency / Dina Regine

What was the only album to out-sell Led Zeppelin’s ‘Physical Graffiti’ in 1975?

Wed 28 January 2026 18:30, UK

The 1970s were the greatest decade for rock music. It was in the ‘60s that the potential within the genre was established, but the ‘70s were when that potential was truly realised.

You had bands who weren’t just playing rock music, but they were experimenting with how much they could push the boundaries of rock. It wasn’t just a case of a riff, a chorus and a solo, but it was all about injecting an established sound with different kinds of music, all of which could help take the genre further than anybody thought was possible.

In 1975, the amount of freedom that was present within the sound of rock music was well and truly awe-inspiring. Everywhere you turned, there were bands and artists working their fingers to the bone, pushing themselves to the limit, in a bid to give the public a perfect and mind-blowing version of the music they already adored.

If people wanted rock that was straight down the line, they had Bruce Springsteen putting out some of his best work. In the modern age, go to any bar that plays rock music, and chances are a track from Springsteen’s legendary album Born to Run will be playing. Everyone loved that record; in fact, the only person who didn’t was Springsteen himself, as he grew sick of the record after spending so long trying to make it perfect.

“After it was finished? I hated it! I couldn’t stand to listen to it,” said The Boss. “I thought it was the worst piece of garbage I’d ever heard. I told Columbia I wouldn’t release it. I told ‘em I’d just go down to the Bottom Line gig and do all the new songs and make it a live album.”

However, if you wanted rock music which didn’t just use run-of-the-mill playing and recording techniques, you had Led Zeppelin putting out some of their best work in the form of Physical Graffiti. After working as a session musician for years and building up momentum in The Yardbirds, Jimmy Page wanted to merge multiple genres and drape them all under the guise of rock to give listeners something brand new. He did this in the form of Led Zeppelin, and while every one of their albums is incredibly exciting, their 1975 offering Physical Graffiti is widely considered their greatest.

That adoration was represented in the number of people who were buying the album as well, because Physical Graffiti wound up being the second-best-selling record of the whole year, with only one album managing to beat it, and while it’s hard to imagine an album exists which is better than Zeppelin’s offering, there was one…

So, what was the only album to out-sell Physical Graffiti?

Roger Waters speaks negatively about Pink Floyd’s early work, as he felt they were trying too hard to be experimental on the eve of psychedelic rock.

“I don’t want to go back to those times at all,” when talking about Piper at the Gates of Dawn and how there wasn’t much of an idea behind what the band were making. “There wasn’t anything ‘grand’ about it’. We were laughable. We were useless. We couldn’t play at all, so we had to do something stupid and ‘experimental’.”

While things might have started ropey, the band managed to home in on their sound a lot more effectively, and that meant that as the years rang on, they started making music which was the perfect blend of rock and experimentation. You have albums like The Wall and Dark Side of the Moon, which are still considered classics, along with, of course, the best-selling album of 1975, Wish You Were Here. The public agreed that their offering was exceptional, which led to 22million album sales, blowing Led Zeppelin’s offering out of the water.