List just published to celebrate 60 years of the charts….
Unsurprisingly, Queen Greatest Hits is number 1, with the usual suspects of Abba, DSOM, Thriller, Brothers In Arms etc all gracing the Top 10.
What does surprise me is that there are two entries from Dido (remember this is all albums from the last sixty years !) and there is nothing by Bowie, Elton John or the Rolling Stones (not even there greatest hits).
The one I’m most surprised about is the Scissor Sisters. What caused their album to sell in such shedloads? … having asked that, the inclusion of James Blunt means that there doesn’t have to be a good reason!
Probably all those Pink Floyd fans 🙂
Hmmm … it just shows how long I’ve lived away from the UK.
I had no idea that bands such as Snow Patrol, Travis, Dido and Kings of Leon would feature in the Top 60 albums of all time in terms of sales. The famous Dido cover certainly didn’t help to shift too many copies of Word magazine, as I recall.
Nice to see “Automatic for the People” just creeping in there in the coveted no. 60 spot!
No surprises. All supermarket CD fodder. And these days all clogging the shelves of your local charity shop.
The shame: I have 6 of these. A mostly dull selection of albums which says much about mainstream tastes and how out of step I / we are.
Only two Beatles albums and one of those is a compilation. But why Sgt Pepper above the others? I would have thought Abbey Road would be up there too.
Sales of Sgt Pepper must have benefitted from that great film The Bee Gees did.
Sgt Pepper is almost certainly there because of ongoing CD sales after it was reissued in 1987. One thing the list shows is how albums didn’t start to sell until the mid 1970s.
The other thing it seems to indicate is (*straps on personal protective equipment*) that in the UK, Queen, ABBA and Michael Jackson are more popular than the Beatles.
The only thing I’m really surprised at is how poorly U2 have fared.
Not really. The Beatles probably feature a lot in the 61 to 200 as ALL their albums sold very well unlike many artists with 2 or 3 big ones. They also sold masses of singles and EPs.
The entire existence of Leona Lewis (Number 23) has passed me by.
Most of these came out in the CD (and download) age that is supposed to have killed sales dead…..
Can’t believe Grease is on there, but not Saturday Night Fever.
The whole 70s (which I would have thought was primo album buying time) seems under-represented. Round our way it was all SN Fever, Hotel California, Elton John, Atlantic Crossing and The Carpenters Gold..
I only own four on the list: The Immaculate Collection (essential), Legend (naturellement), The Marshall Mathers LP (shoulda been MM E.P.) and Urban Hymns (another E.P. Polyfillad to album length IMO)…
Same here re. the 70s stuff. You’ve seen the bingo cards!
By my reckoning 45 of those titles were released solely within the CD age and many of the others (eg Tubular Bells and DSOTM) would have picked up massive new sales when reissued on CD.
The Sound Of Music is a strange one, however. It was a massive seller in the 60s and stayed in the charts for years but I can’t imagine it collected many sales on CD.
The Sound of Music is a strange one. If it’s there, why not South Pacific? Wasn’t it the number 1 album for the first 2 or 3 years of the album chart in the 50s? I guess they didn’t really sell many albums at all back then.
If you look at the year by year top selling albums of the 50s, it was all soundtracks with a couple of Sinatras thrown in, until Elvis came along.
Even as we moved into the 60s, soundtracks such as South Pacific, West Side Story and Sound Of Music were still selling in massive quantities before the Beatles turned things upside down in 1963/64.
But Sound Of Music was 1965, so it must have been one of last of the big old school musicals to sell big.
One of the biggest sellers of 1960 was the Black and White Minstrel Show, so our parents
(or grandparents) were still buying plenty of shit.
And it’s worth pointing out that 10 of the 20 biggest-selling UK albums of the 60s were by The Beatles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_albums_of_the_1960s_in_the_United_Kingdom
What`s really unusual is that Simon & Garfunkel who had 3 albums in the `60`s top 20 best sellers list, had 2 (Sounds Of Silence & Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme) which only peaked at No 13 in the charts, which must reflect a long stay on the charts or high sales even for LPs (that`s all we had then) lower down on the charts.
I own 19 of those 60, but I also own maybe a few thousand or more of the lowest selling albums of all time.
13 of ’em here. All of the top three. Quite a few of the rest purely by inheritance.
Nice to see Tracy Chapman’s eponymous album in there. A neglected treasure IMO.
Off the top of my head, we have 20 of these. Some of them fall into the “almost everyone owns this, eg Rumours. I take no responsibility for Simply Red (definitely my wife’s before I knew her) and we don’t have The Joshua Tree. I must have heard that several times a week in 1987/88. So often that I didn’t need to buy it.
The Tracy Chapman album still gets an outing from time to time.
Neglected by me, I must confess, but no longer.
15 here. Not the same Abba one, but a very similar compilation.
How bizarre to see three Robbie Williams albums in there. I doubt that anyone is buying them any more, judging by the amount you see clogging up every charity shop in the land. Ditto Spice Girls.
Ooops, I have 21….. (Not necessarily all my buying decisions, mind)
You mean out of all those 60 albums, you only have the Adele one ? 🙂
I own the grand total of 2.
My least favourite Beatles album and my least favourite Beatles compilation!
If anything, precisely because it’s these albums that constitute the whole stock of W.H. Smith and Sainsbury’s, they will pull away from the pack further in years to come.
As CDs take up so little space, I don’t quite understand why such stores don’t increase their range.
Seven for me and all of those except for Graceland only get an outing when the moon is blue..
Sixteen here, which is a bit of a surprise. Though admittedly it’s only “Legend”, “Immaculate Collection”, “Automatic for the People” and “A Rush Of Blood To The Head” (shut up, there’s nothing wrong with that album!) that I’ve played any time recently.
“1” is the only Beatles album I own, and only because the previous driver had left it in the CD player of a car I hired a couple of years ago, but I have to admit to owning both those Dido albums (blinded a bit by the associations with Eminem and Faithless (and the fact that she’s posh and quite cute) I think, though I don’t remember either album being abysmal) and the Spice Girls one (no excuses).
Can’t recall any Dido songs, offhand. Maybe they’re ok, but I’ve never knowingly heard anything of hers.
I had no idea Dark Side Of The Moon never reached Number 1
The most bizarre entry is “1.”
The concept is flawed, the cover art is vague at best, and no one with even a passing interest in The Beatles would call the track-listing anything but fantastically dull.
It’s just “20 Greatest Hits,” a long forgotten and little regarded 1982 comp., in a different sleeve.
I reckon it’s the worst possible way anyone could listen to them.
The Beatles “1” is hamstrung by the fact that different tracks were released in different countries (eg Yesterday wasn’t even a UK single first time around and Eight Days A Week was never a UK single) and other great singles didn’t reach #1 in UK OR US (Strawberry Fields/Penny Lane and Please Please Me) and so are ineligible for inclusion, which makes a mockery of the concept. Then there was all that confusing double A side business. It’s all a mess and as you say, the concept was flawed from the start.
That didn’t stop “1” becoming the biggest seller of 2000, selling 31 million copies to date and is still shifting 1,000 copies a week even now.
It’s incredible that Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell, as the 19th best selling UK album of the past 60 years, never climbed higher than number 9 in the chart at any time during that period….
I own/have owned about half of those.
Wouldn’t know any Leona Lewis songs though.
The comments section to this article is great, focusing on the fact that Reg from Pinner has been hard done by and this gem which I think expresses the exact opposite of yer standard Afterword contributor:
LMFAO the only two I own are Ed Sheeran – X and Snow Patrol – Eyes Open. partially because with the exception of Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Michael Jackson I basically hate any music before 2000.
Afterword t-shirt Front: I basically hate any music before 2000 Back: Only joking any fu knowe anything after 1971 is shite.
KFD’s Early Music thread was so popular, maybe we should have an Afterword T-shirt proclaiming “Any music after 1580 is shite”.
I have 9. Sgt Pepper and Bridge get played quite a lot in my house – generally in an effort to educate the kiddies. Hand on heart – I’ve never heard of Leona Lewis; embarrassingly as I like to consider myself as someone still with a sticky finger on the pop pulse.
Heard of. Couldn’t name any songs.
I am an old fart, me.
I’ve got 18, 14 of which are LPs, and only one I definitely don’t play any more (Gray). And 9 of the top 10.
And where’s AC/DC’s Back In Black?
Back in Black was only huge in America; that’s where its sales come from. It did well here, but it wasn’t massive.
Er, 52 of them.
No Dire Straits, Shania Twain, James Blunt, Dirty Dancing, Leona Lewis (though I do have the rather splendid “Bleeding Love” & “Run” singles), Michael Buble, Tracy Chapman (just a Best of…) or The Sound Of Music (though my Dad has it if that counts). Don’t actually own Abba Gold, but have all the tracks several times over on other comps & studio albums.
In my defence, the Corrs album & second Dido album were promos I got free.
Surprised not to see “Carry On Up The Charts” in there…
Chapeau!
Fortunately I can say I’ve only got 48 of them?
This isn’t a list of the greatest records of the last 60 years, and I don’t think it even reflects the last 60 years of record buying. It’s one driven largely by cheap supermarket CD sales from around 1995 to 2005 and reflects a limited choice they offered, unwanted Christmas gifts, impulse purchases, something to put in the Car CD player, something to put on at a dinner party – Dido in effect is the ultimate beneficiary of huge cohort of people who aren’t really music fans and just wanted some nice background music for the car or wherever. If they’d piled up Best of Bowie or Stones 40 Licks at a knock down price in the late 90s early 00s they would be in there too.
Those sort of sales, and that sort of mass physical music buying is now all but gone – The people that would have bought a loss-leader ÂŁ6 Dido or James Blunt CD in Tesco either have Apple Music, Spotify or just stream whatever they want on YouTube.
I agree with this. I would also add that a lot of these albums were mainstays of the “2 for 20” and “3 for 20” promotions in HMV etc over 20 years. This means that a lot of the CDs sold were effectively impulse buys, rather than someone going into a record shop and saying “Good morning madam, I’d like a copy of the latest Fleetwood Mac album please” Oh and one of those Little Britain keychains please”.
That explains a lot, Dr V. Although it’s worth pointing out that – whether it’s a presence in movies (Elvis, Cliff, soundtrack sales), being a tv personality (Leona Lewis, Val Doonican those Black & White Minstrels), being beneficiaries of the hi fi/quadrophonic (Dark Side, Tubular Bells), FM radio (Rumours), cd (Brothers In Arms), or pop video (Thriller) zeitgeist – various artistes have had quite the sales bump through some factor other than merit alone being in their favour..
Here’s a sort-of similar American list. Good news for Brit artists The Zep, The Floyd, The Beatles, Elton, Phil Collins, Adele and George Michael
(and confirmation that the Shania Twain album I’d never heard of was a transatlantic phenomenon)..
Oops:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_albums_in_the_United_States
Compare and contrast with the first ever Discogs monthly Top 50. A few in common, lots more you’d expect – and a few curveballs. https://blog.discogs.com/discogs-top-50-may-2016/?utm_source=social&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Database_2016_07_08
and slightly skewed by Prince.
Would he really feature quite so prominently in any other “regular” month?
The one obvious question, particularly regarding the crossover with the Official Charts version is: who is buying this stuff?
I’m sure I read somewhere it was suggested (statistically at least) that 1 in 5 homes had a copy of Queens Greatest Hits and 1 in 10 owned Dire Straits Brothers In Arms
The Beautiful South’s “Carry On Up The Charts” was estimated to be owned by 1 in 7 households, so puzzled as to why it’s not in there.
I own 36 of them – 39 if you count 3 copies of Tubular Bells, and getting on for 50 if you consider ownership on LP and CD.
It is lists such as this that give the opportunity to return to forgotten albums – I’ve just re-listened to David Gray. I’m not going to suggest it is indespensible, but is still rather good.
An observation – sales of Queen’s Greatest Hits and Greatest Hits II are no doubt inflated by re-packaging, first as Greatest Hits I + II, and then by the addition of Volume III.
No real surprises in the list, except perhaps the absence of No Parlez
Someone I know on twitter found 8 copies of No Parlez in one shop today. Hours later this was trumped by someone else finding 12, again in just one shop. Twelve!
I stake my claim for the record number in one shop.
The Sound Machine, Reading had 26 copies when I last looked back in March
(much to my annoyance I haven’t been in recently to check if they are breeding them).
Surely if Charity Shops can handle that many copies, and an equivalent number of Boney Ms Night Flight To Venus and/or Greatest Hits, then surely they should both sit comfortably in the Top 5?
Ah yes, I remember you mentioning that before! 26 must be some kind of, er, record. (Pretty sure I made that lame joke before as well.)
I think all these copies of No Parlez are up to something, as my spies tell me they now seem to be missing from many boot sales and charity shops around the UK, but appear in large numbers at others. I get the feeling they’re gathering together in groups for some reason, perhaps planning a coup? We could do worse, I suppose.
No Parlez for PM!