The 20 best-selling albums ever
Popularity is a strange old thing—it should be an engine of influence, but as the best-selling list below proves, it’s far more arbitrary than that. As Brian Eno said of The Velvet Underground: “I was talking to Lou Reed the other day, and he said that the first Velvet Underground record sold only 30,000 copies in its first five years. Yet, that was an enormously important record for so many people. I think everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band!”
What these albums represent is more a strange cultural phenomenon rather than a wide endorsement by society. If you compare the records to their present-day listenership, then in most cases you will find quite a stark contrast. This is not purely because they typified their time and have since fallen out of favour, but often because they caught the windfall of a fad.
We tend to think of viral sensations as purely a cyber phenomenon, but they have existed for aeons. These records were talked about by everyone and as such you simply didn’t want to miss out. Of course, some of them are crackers and it might sound contrarian to look for anything more than that, but studies show that when things transcend society as a craze, they pique our natural curiosity. It is ingrained in us to know what our neighbours are up to.
Thus, certain records catch on like wildfire, and that’s something that A&R folks have been trying to capture ever since. However, as you can tell, the modern era has thrown up many (naturally this is also due to cumulative sales over time too). And perhaps, with everything now being dispersed into the online macrocosm, it’s possible that we’ll see fewer new records break into this list in future.
Meanwhile, albums like Rumours continue to rapidly rise up the ranks. Not only was it huge upon release, but in the last few years, it has also figured in the end-of-year top vinyl sales. This is fuelled by the band’s exposure to new audiences thanks to Stevie Nicks collaborating with Harry Styles and his young fans looking to bolster their collections with a classic. At the same time, there are inclusions sliding the other way thanks to retrospective reappraisals. This all makes for a collection of oddities that prove how bizarre our cultural history is.
You can check out the full list below.
The 20 best-selling albums ever:
- Born in the U.S.A. – Bruce Springsteen
- Supernatural – Santana
- Metallica – Metallica
- Bat Out of Hell – Meat Loaf
- Saturday Night Fever – Bee Gees
- Appetite for Destruction – Guns ‘n’ Roses
- Legend – Bob Marley & The Wailers
- Gold: Greatest Hits – ABBA
- 1 – The Beatles
- Dark Side of the Moon – Pink Floyd
- Jagged Little Pill – Alanis Morissette
- 21 – Adele
- Back in Black – AC/DC
- Rumours – Fleetwood Mac
- The Bodyguard Soundtrack – Whitney Houston
- Led Zeppelin IV – Led Zeppelin
- Come on Over – Shania Twain
- Hotel California – Eagles
- Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975 – Eagles
- Thriller – Michael Jackson
