Queen tops most album sold chart

According to the Independent Newspaper Queen's Greatest Hits 1 has sold over 5.8 million copies and has beaten The Beatles Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band which has sold only 5 million copies.

The full Story http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/well-it-is-jubilee-year-queens-greatest-hits-is-britains-bestselling-album-of-past-halfcentury-7627530.html.

Queen's Greatest Hits 2 also appears on the list at number 10.

Yeah :)

why is this an acomplishment? so a greatest hits compilation outsells a regular lp...wow
now if you'd said ANATO outsold SPLHCB then that would be worthy of news

if we are going to give this list some real meaning we need to strip out all of the greatest hits albums...this leaves a top ten of "actual band studio recordings" that look like this

1. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) The Beatles
2. What's The Story (1995) Oasis
3. Thriller (1982) Michael Jackson
4. 21 (2011) Adele
5. Brothers In Arms (1985) Dire Straits
6. Dark Side Of The Moon (1973) Pink Floyd
7. Bad (1987) Michael Jackson
8. Back To Black (2006) Amy Winehouse
9. Stars (1991) Simply Red
10. Rumours (1977) Fleetwood Mac


...which is pretty much how i would;ve seen this list being at any time in the last ten years....Adele excluded

weird how Queen's best-selling studio recording didn't even make the top 40....now thta says more about queen...

think about it, the public put BOTH greatest hits albums in there, like madonna, abba etc, but don't include opera. that makes queen a singles band, by most accounts.

What about the 11 million it (Sgt Peppers) sold in the US to Queen's GH1 8 million?

i think the point of this thread was that it was about "selective glory"

brENsKi is completely right.

Why is everyone talking about this all of a sudden? Really, the fact that Queen's compilations are at the top instead of "real" albums boils down to the differences in how the bands have handled their legacies. The Beatles have released some compilation albums, but don't overwhelm people with them. Queen kind of does. Really, it's just the same old point that Queen should have handled their legacy differently, but they didn't and they still aren't, and no matter how much me or anyone else complains, their back catalogue gets little attention. That's all it is. How their legacies are handled.

That's a very valid point waunakonor. They wanted to be a hits band, they got what they wanted.

and consquently "opera" "II" and "races" get completely overlooked in any true great lists

Which is why they did the deep cuts albums.In the vain hope that the general buying public would pick up on them.Which they didnt.

"stable door" and "horse" are the key words here.
deep cuts were too little too late....why release these 20 years after the last time the four of them recorded anything together?

time to do this was when they were still evolving as a unit - say 78-81 - they coulda stuck to two singles per album but the didn't.

The Game - 4 singles
Hot Space - 4 singles
The Works - 4 singles
AKOM - 4 singles
The Miracle - 5 singles
Innuendo - 5 singles?

by this time their reputation as a singles band was cemented.

Most of the remaining real albums on the list released plenty singles from them. They are all still just collections of songs. Is the "problem" with Queen from this angle that they released so many albums in a short period of time around the early to mid 70s. Had there been one mid 70s album with Killer Queen, Bo Rhap and Somebody to Love on it for example surely this would have created one truly massive smash album.

I don't think they always meant to be a singles band, however once it got to the point of AKOM and The Miracle this was pretty evident, considering those are basically singles and filler

[QUOTE] [b]AlbaNo1 wrote:[/b]
Most of the remaining real albums on the list released plenty singles from them. They are all still just collections of songs. Is the "problem" with Queen from this angle that they released so many albums in a short period of time around the early to mid 70s. Had there been one mid 70s album with Killer Queen, Bo Rhap and Somebody to Love on it for example surely this would have created one truly massive smash album.[/QUOTE]
you don't need to release loads of singles to shift warehouses full of albums, you just need to make something good.
Rumours, Thriller, DSOTM, Zep4 and Brothers in Arms weren't still popping in and out of the album charts years after release because of further single releases - they were in the charts because they were really good albums
floyd, zeppelin and other respected bands never bothered with singles, the who used to limit it to one or two per album and the beatles were in the habit of new singles not being on the album that followed. good example being Sgt Peppers - where Strawberry Fields/Penny Lane were not included, because they adopted a policy of "new album = new material"

Im just doing basic maths here and applying hypothetically - the bulk of the best selling UK album is made up of songs released by Queen between 74-78 or so but spread over 6 albums. Thats a lot. Had there been more concentration of hits on one or two albums these would have sold more and greatest hits less.