The best-selling LPs of all time: do they deserve to be?

[fange]

Well, best-selling according to this Paste article -
https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/ ... ign=180914


Whether the exact order is right or not, the fact remains - these albums have moved humungous amounts of product, and made stupendous amounts of the old dough-re-mi for their creators.
So, a simple question - in your opinion, do they musically DESERVE to be amongst the best-selling albums of all time?

1. Michael Jackson: Thriller
2. Eagles: Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975
3. Eagles: Hotel California
4. Shania Twain: Come on Over
5. Led Zeppelin: Led Zeppelin IV
6. Whitney Houston & Various Artists: "The Bodyguard" Soundtrack
7. Fleetwood Mac: Rumours
8. AC/DC: Back in Black
9. Adele: 21
10. Alanis Morissette: Jagged Little Pill
11. Pink Floyd: Dark Side of the Moon
12. The Beatles: 1
13. ABBA: Gold: Greatest Hits
14. Bob Marley & The Wailers: Legend
15. Guns N’ Roses: Appetite for Destruction
16. The Bee Gees & Various Artists: "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack
17. Meat Loaf: Bat Out of Hell
18. Metallica: Metallica
19. Santana: Supernatural
20. Bruce Springsteen: Born in the U.S.A.
21. Madonna: The Immaculate Collection
22. Celine Dion: Let’s Talk About Love
23. Michael Jackson: Bad
24. Pink Floyd: The Wall
25. The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

Poll away, and add the odd comment too if you feel inclined.

[naughty boy]

Surprises me to see AC/DC in there.

Pepper gets my vote, for obvious (to BCBers) reasons.

[Darkness_Fish]

No.

[fange]

Surprises me to see AC/DC in there.

Pepper gets my vote, for obvious (to BCBers) reasons.

Sorry, have now changed the vote to choose as many of the 25 as you like.

I saw Back in Black explode with my own eyes, and it was one of those records that became a signifier of being a true "Rock" lover. At a time of splintering musical directions by 1980, the record kind of became a totem, the essense of pure "Rock and Roll" ™ ®, i guess. It is no greater or lesser than a bunch of excellent Rock albums, and for my money is only the 3rd best AC/DC album, but there you go.

I've gone for Sgt. Pepper, LZ IV, 1, The Immaculate Collection, and Gold.
I almost went for the Sat. Night Fever soundtrack but rethought it; i love it, but does it really deserve to have sold that many copies? I may come back.

[naughty boy]

Define 'deserved'

[The Modernist]

The huge success of that Santana album seems really bizarre.

[fange]

Is it that fucking good, good enough that it deserves to be in the top-25 best-selling popular music albums of all time. Around the world.

[fange]

The huge success of that Santana album seems really bizarre.

It is just bewildering, isn't it. But something about it captured a huge global market at the exact right time.

[The Modernist]

The Wall is another one I don't really get. I've never listened to it, never wanted to. They seemed like dinosaurs at the time, yet the rest of the world went mad for it. What an earth was the appeal?

[The Modernist]

It's quite interesting to read the entries as an insight into the way millennials see old music. Quite apart from the standard of writing being poor, some of the pronouncements are very strange: Born in the USA as Springsteen's creative peak ? The Wall "psychedelic" and "influential"?

[naughty boy]

The Wall is another one I don't really get. I've never listened to it, never wanted to. They seemed like dinosaurs at the time, yet the rest of the world went mad for it. What an earth was the appeal?

I've honestly never understood the appeal of that one either. Maybe people think it's philosophical or something. Musically it's terribly bloated and lifeless.

[Rayge]

No.

This. None of them in my (entirely notional) top 100.

The only ones there that I ever bought were Rumours and Born in the USA.

[trans-chigley express]

The Wall is another one I don't really get. I've never listened to it, never wanted to. They seemed like dinosaurs at the time, yet the rest of the world went mad for it. What an earth was the appeal?

I've honestly never understood the appeal of that one either. Maybe people think it's philosophical or something. Musically it's terribly bloated and lifeless.

As much as I love The Wall I do find it's massive success kind of bewildering too

[never/ever]

The Wall has accumulated sales ever since its release in 1979. It was huge on the charts then too.

Most of these albums have ticked over to today. Makes Adele's success even more impressive for me.

[fange]

It's quite interesting to read the entries as an insight into the way millennials see old music. Quite apart from the standard of writing being poor, some of the pronouncements are very strange: Born in the USA as Springsteen's creative peak ? The Wall "psychedelic" and "influential"?

Well, it's always easier to make those deadlines when you don't have to worry about everything being "true".

[Darkness_Fish]

Are The Eagles a purely US phenomenon, or do they sell elsewhere around the world? I mean, I know Hotel California, but I couldn't name a single other track by them.

[trans-chigley express]

Some of these albums just have massive across-the-board appeal to a huge number of what we music snobs would call casual music fans such as Eagles and Michael Jackson, and this applies to the many compilations in there too which were bought by people who probably only ever buy greatest hits and so have copies of Beatles 1 and Abba Gold but no other albums by them.

There are some that just sold tons very quickly on the back of a string of big hits (eg Thriller, Rumours, Jagged Little Pill, Saturday Night Fever, Born in the USA) even though in some cases there is not much depth to the albums beyond the hits so possibly were never played that much other to cherry pick the best songs (Saturday Night Fever, and Thriller springs to mind). There are others that just sold over a very long period of time.

The oddest ones are probably the Floyd ones (no hit singles for DSotM and The Wall coming out long after punk was supposed to have made dinosaurs like Floyd extinct), Bob Marley (reggae is not a style of music with mass appeal), The Bodyguard soundtrack (I have no idea what's even on this album and don't know anyone that bought it) and the AC/DC, Metallica and Santana albums, particularly the Santana one coming decades after his best years when only the most hardcore fan were still interested in him.


It's difficult to say which ones deserve to have sold so many. I could just pick my favourites but that seems to somehow miss the point. I can certainly pinpoint a few that don't deserve it.

[naughty boy]

Is it that fucking good, good enough that it deserves to be in the top-25 best-selling popular music albums of all time. Around the world.

So we're voting for our favourites, really, aren't we?

[fange]

Are The Eagles a purely US phenomenon, or do they sell elsewhere around the world? I mean, I know Hotel California, but I couldn't name a single other track by them.

The Eagles have sold very, VERY well in Australia.

In 2016, this one CD by the Eagles ...



...had gone 12x Platinum, Platinum being sales of 70,000 units.

[Darkness_Fish]

Overall though, I find the very concept of the question strange. Are any of them among my favourite albums? No, obviously. But then is the criteria that they captured something of the zeitgeist and appealed to everyone? If so, that criteria is kind of self-fulfilling.

The stand out for me is Thriller, but again, that might kinda be self-fulfilling. As a child, I remember the all encompassing ubiquity of Michael Jackson at the time, and there's certainly a lot to admire about tracks like "Billie Jean", but I don't know if I see that as a stand-out because it brilliantly captured the public's imagination, or if it was pretty much foisted there by an immense marketing machine, a couple of well-crafted songs, and the emergence of MTV as a major force in music promotion.