According to the New Yorker, we are definitively being lied to, album sales of the past are greatly, greatly overestimated. Bill Wyman investigated Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ album, which has supposedly sold a record number of 100 million copies and the singer's overall sales which have supposedly reached 750 million worldwide over his career… but what if this wasn’t really true?
Actually, it appears that the 100 million number is fluctuating quite a bit, for example, in Quincy Jones’s book ‘Q’, the album is said to have sold 100 million copies, and then 120 million copies a few pages later! Fan sites have roughly ‘estimated’ that the singer has sold a billion records, but it seems they are drawing these numbers out of their ass, or out of the estate, which is bout the same thing!
According to the New Yorker, the 2009 numbers for ‘Thriller’ are known: 29 million albums, to that we have to add the 2 or so million sold after Jackson’s death, but even with an estimation of 3 million, we reach 32 million in the US. To estimate the sales overseas, Wyman consulted Guillaume Vieira, a fan who obsessively collects sales news from labels all over the globe. And thus, according to Veira, 15 million of ‘Thriller’ albums were sold in Europe, 3 million in Asia,… the total reaching 35 million around the globe, and definitively not reaching one hundred million altogether! And the pretense of Jackson having sold one billion records seems to be a total utopia, since ‘Thriller’ was by far his best seller. How is this even possible?
Honestly, I have no idea how this guy Vieira managed to collect this amount of information, but here are the numbers published by the New Yorker, and if it is true, exaggerated record sales were just another lie told about Michael Jackson!
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