The UK albums chart has just celebrated its 70th anniversary, and the body that looks after that venerable old institution – The Official Charts Company – has revealed what have been the biggest albums in all that time.
The biggest studio album of the last 70 years – in the UK at least – is Oasis‘s (What’s The Story) Morning Glory, which to date has sold 6.2 million copies.
If this sounds quite low, remember that this is just UK sales. Worldwide, the album has shifted over 22 million copies.
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Ahead of Oasis are two unstoppable greatest hits juggernauts – Abba Gold (7.1 million copies) and the biggest overall album, Queen’s Greatest Hits (7.8 million). Released in 1981, the latter has sold over 25 million worldwide, and even in an era when the greatest hits package seems increasingly redundant, still keeps selling.
The biggest selling album released in the 21st Century is Adele’s 21, which comes in fourth with 5.7 million copies. The rest of the Top Ten is pretty much as you’d expect: in descending order – Sgt Pepper, Rumours, Dark Side Of The Moon, Thriller, Legend by Bob Marley and Dire Straits’ Brothers In Arms.
The Official Charts Company has issued a statement together with this list. Becca Monahan and Chris Austin, the interim Co-Managing Directors of the body, said: “Huge congratulations to Oasis, as the incomparable (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? is officially crowned the UK’s biggest studio album of all time. Three decades on, its scale and influence remain extraordinary – a defining British record that continues to unite generations, fill stadiums and soundtrack lives.
“Celebrating 70 years of the Official Albums Chart offers a unique opportunity to honour the album’s enduring place at the heart of music culture. The way fans discover and enjoy music may be ever-changing, but the album remains the ultimate expression of an artist’s creativity, ambition and vision.”
So what was the very first chart topper, back in 1956? Well, it was a bona fide classic – Sinatra’s Songs For Swingin’ Lovers. The rest of the Top 5 (and it was only a Top 5 back then) consisted of the soundtracks to Rodgers And Hammerstein’s Carousel and Oklahoma and live recordings of Mel Torme and Louis Armstrong. Songs For Swingin’ Lovers was the only one of those five that was designed to be an artistic statement in its own right, and it pointed the way towards the future.
Whether the album format has much of a future in 2026 is another question entirely. But its demise has been predicted for quite some time now (at least since the turn of the century). Despite that, artists seem to keep on making them. And – for the moment – we keep on buying them.
