01/06/2013
Bill Wyman, the rock critic not the retired Rolling Stones bassist, has a list of global sales of albums compiled by French music sales nerd Guillaume Vieira:
1. Michael Jackson, “Thriller”: 66,200,000
2. Soundtrack, “Grease”: 44,700,000
3. Pink Floyd, “The Dark Side of the Moon”: 44,200,000
4. Whitney Houston et al., “The Bodyguard”: 38,600,000
5. The Bee Gees at al., “Saturday Night Fever”: 37,200,000
6. The Eagles, “Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975”: 36,900,000
7. Bob Marley, “Legend”: 36,800,000
8. Led Zeppelin, “IV”: 35,700,000
9. AC/DC, “Back in Black”: 35,700,000
10. Shania Twain, “Come on Over”: 35,400,000
11. Michael Jackson, “Bad”: 34,700,000
12. Soundtrack, “Dirty Dancing”: 33,300,000
13. Dire Straits, “Brothers in Arms”: 33,200,000
14. Alanis Morissette, “Jagged Little Pill”: 33,200,000
15. Fleetwood Mac, “Rumours”: 33,000,000
16. The Beatles, “1”: 32,400,000
17. Pink Floyd, “The Wall”: 31,900,000
18. ABBA, “Gold”: 31,400,000
19. Guns N’ Roses, “Appetite for Destruction”: 30,800,000
20. Simon & Garfunkel, “Greatest Hits”: 30,700,000
21. Queen, “Greatest Hits”: 30,600,000
22. Celine Dion, “Let’s Talk About Love”: 30,300,000
23. Michael Jackson, “Dangerous”: 30,200,000
24. Celine Dion, “Falling into You”: 30,200,000
25. The Eagles, “Hotel California”: 30,000,000
26. Bruce Springsteen, “Born in the U.S.A.”: 29,100,000
27. Metallica, “Metallica”: 28,900,000
28. Meat Loaf, “Bat Out of Hell”: 28,700,000
29. Soundtrack, “Titanic”: 28,500,000
30. The Beatles, “Abbey Road”: 28,300,000
Let’s see, I own the Bob Marley, the Dire Straits, the Beatle’s "1", the Springsteen, and the Meat Loaf. There are lots of of stuff I wouldn’t mind owning such as the Eagles, Simon Garfunkel, Fleetwood Mac, Zep, and "Abbey Road."
When I moved to Chicago in 1982, I sold some of my albums to a used record shop. Interestingly, the owner was very offended that I wasn’t keeping James Brown "Live at the Apollo" which he gave me a good price for. But he refused to buy or even take for free my Queen albums. He said his bins were full of Queen albums that nobody wanted. Obviously, much has changed in the view of Queen.
Every single album on the list is primarily in English, even the Celine Dion and ABBA stuff made by a French Canadian and Swedes. Wyman asks his source about a non-Anglosphere breakout:
What about China or India, I asked — could a Jackson-size phenom emerge from either country, each with a population far bigger than that of the United States?
Definitely nothing crazy happening in China and India. Despite massive number of inhabitants their markets are pretty weak, similar to Australia or lower.
In the golden age of the nineties, some local acts reached sales of three or four million in China, like their “local Michael Jackson” Jacky Cheung, with “The Goodbye Kiss” (arguably the best-selling album ever in continental Asia), and around two million in India, but those are the best-selling albums ever there.
The Anglosphere remains dominant in pop culture.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.