What is Bob Dylan’s best-selling album?
Balancing critical acclaim and commercial success is a feat achieved by only a select few, with iconic acts like The Beatles and Pink Floyd standing as prime examples. Another artist who has navigated both the highs and lows of this precarious tightrope is Bob Dylan. While he is no stranger to critical and commercial missteps, his triumphs have soared to heights few others can match.
Dylan’s journey has been so legendary that multiple biopics have been made about his life. Todd Haynes’s 2007 effort, I’m Not There, even utilised multiple celebrated actors such as Cate Blanchett and Christian Bale to portray different aspects of his public persona; that’s how substantial his story is. While some of his history has undoubtedly been inflated and hyper-mythologised, it says it all about ‘The Bard’ that his work and life continue to be so influential today.
What’s even more miraculous is that he’s still going and is practically the only true great of his era still in operation today. Apart from a few flubbed chapters over the years, he’s mainly kept his work at a high level of quality that, again, even his most lauded peers failed to do.
An artist of immense substance, Dylan first burst onto the scene on the coattails of the folk revival in the early 1960s. Helped on by his constant gigging and the prominence of his girlfriend at the time, Joan Baez, who he would eclipse in stature, despite her innovative strides that paved the way for him, when he released his self-titled debut in 1962, it was clear that he was no ordinary folkie. Thanks to originals such as ‘Song to Woody’ and others, his socially aware music – his era’s answer to that of the eponymous Woody Guthrie – would become the mouthpiece of his generation.
This sentiment was confirmed when he followed up the promise of his debut with 1963’s The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. Featuring staples such as ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’, ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right’, ‘Masters of War’, and of course, ‘A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall’, the record captures the spirit of the period with Dylan’s soulful, raw delivery, emotive acoustic guitar, and most importantly, the fusion of sharp social commentary with poetic splendour. It set a new precedent in music.
Writing about personal matters had never really been done before, and it changed every musician and fan’s perception almost overnight. Dylan then succeeded in his second record with classics in 1964’s The Times They Are a-Changin’ and Another Side of Bob Dylan, which cemented his place as the definitive voice of his generation. His follow-up was the 1965 double album, Bringing It All Back Home, which featured a first side using an electric guitar and backing band, wherein he resoundingly displayed that musicians should be unburdened by genre or expectation.
So, what is Bob Dylan’s best-selling album?
After that moment when Dylan bravely smashed the day’s standards, he was free to do what he wanted. An angry fan might have tried to stab him for turning his back on acoustic folk, but he was undeterred. This creative freedom would see him produce some of his most acclaimed and best-selling efforts, such as 1965’s Highway 61 Revisited and the following year’s Blonde on Blonde.
Yet, despite their significance for his career and culture, another of his studio efforts is his best-selling. By many accounts, that is 1975’s Blood on the Tracks, the emotional, autobiographical record featuring ‘Tangled Up In Blue’. It is steeped in his personal life at the time, including his estrangement from his then-wife Sara. According to most sources, it has sold 2,918,000 copies to date.
While Blood on the Tracks is Dylan’s best-selling studio album, two other releases top it in sales. Earning the silver medal is the 1971 compilation, Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits Volume II, with 5,202,000 sales, and taking home the gold is its predecessor, 1967’s Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits. It has 6,525,000 sales.
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