What was the best-selling album of 1975?
The year 1975 was at the heart of the decade everyone seemed to love, bringing with it Fawlty Towers, flared trousers, and firing up the disco ball, and became the essence of what 1970s nostalgia has come to mean.
Its musical catalogue also goes a long way in cementing this status, primarily through the rise of what has now come to be regarded as staples of the classic rock canon. There were absolute stormers like Physical Graffiti by Led Zeppelin, A Night at the Opera by Queen, and Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen: all seminal records of their own making, and all mind-blowingly released within the same 12 months.
Surprisingly to some, none of those take the top spot for the best-selling album of the year, although they do deserve the recognition for reaching close. Edging them all out to take the rightful gold was Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here, according to sales figures from across the world.
Shifting no less than 23 million copies, the album marked a definitive milestone for Pink Floyd, in a moment where they almost needed it more than ever. Coming off the back of The Dark Side of the Moon two years prior, some might have feared that there was no way for the band to rocket any further when they had already reached the stratosphere.
But if there was one thing Roger Waters and Co were going to do, it was to prove that ill fate wrong, and in response, they produced a magnum opus.
What was the significance of the year 1975 to Pink Floyd?
Despite their blistering takeover of the rock and roll world over the course of those years, the time leading up to 1975 had also been laced by a certain element of tragedy for the band.
Syd Barrett had left just before the turn of the decade, and external pretences aside, the group were swimming without an oar. Hence, for Waters, Wish You Were Here was both the final olive branch and ultimate reckoning towards him.
The album recording will forever be tied to the moment Barrett unexpectedly turned up at the studio, unrecognisable to the band, poignantly the last time they would ever see him, to steer the direction of seminal tracks like ‘Shine On, You Crazy Diamond’. For all its major gravitas, this move was the driver of what made the record so seismic, signalling the end of a journey in one sense, but also the start of another.
In some ways, record sales may seem like a rather superficial and frivolous thing to talk about when considering every ounce of the emotional weight that the album brought about for Pink Floyd, but this doesn’t mean that it wasn’t significant. Regardless, all of it seemed like consolation prizes, because the reality was that the band were deep in mourning for their old friend.
