Reviewing the Best Selling Albums of All Time
Odds are you once owned one of these albums
1. Thriller - Michael Jackson
This album happens to be the first I ever owned. I haven’t listened to it in a while. The first couple of tracks are ok. The girl is mine is the first standout, co-written with Paul McCartney. Thriller is after that, I for some reason remembered it being the last track but apparently not. After Thriller we get Beat It, Billie Jean, Human Nature (My favorite song on the album). Four huge hits in a row. The last couple of songs are ok. It’s hard to judge this album as if I’m hearing for the first time, but it’s a great album, although it doesn’t have the depth of a lot of the other albums on this list, or even other Michael Jackson albums. Just a bunch of fun pop songs.
2. AC/DC - Back in Black
Every track is super high energy and very catchy. This would be a good workout album. I can definitely see why this is on the list, you don’t have to skip a single track on this album. It opens with Hells Bells which is my favorite track and serves as a great intro to the whole album and then each song after hits you with great memorable riffs. I’ve heard many of these songs on the radio an uncountable number of times, I’m surprised it took me so long to sit down and listen to the whole album.
Well one reason is because when these songs were more popular you had to buy an album, really commit to it before you even heard it. Now you can just check anything out on Spotify. I wonder how different this top 10 list would be if Spotify existed back then.
3. The Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd
The first time I heard this was at a laser show at the Miami Planetarium which is now called the Frost Museum of Science, named after the principle of the elementary school I went to. You can listen to this album over and over and appreciate different aspects of it each time. It has some of the best guitar solos ever. I especially love Time. If you’ve never listened to this it’s a must. It holds the record for being on the charts for 741 weeks, a testament to how timeless this album is, I think generation after generation will continue to discover this. Not just one of the best albums on this list but one of the best albums of all time.
4. The Bodyguard - Whitney Houston
I remember when this album and movie came out Whitney’s version of “I will always love you” was on the radio all the time. It really blew up like few songs do. I had never up until this point heard the rest of the album though.
I will always love you is still a good song. I didn’t realize I’m Every Woman was on this album. Whitney really displays her pipes on Run to You, she has a very beautiful voice.
The second half of the album is a bunch of various artists some decent songs a lot of them are covers. Whitney Houston doing the heavy lifting here. Not a bad album but really for me the standouts are the Whitney songs.
5. Meatloaf - Bat out of Hell
It has a very 70s feel to it, which makes sense. It came out the same year I was born. Only 7 songs, coming in at 46 minutes. This qualifies as a rock opera. I think that is a lot of the appeal, there aren’t a lot of concept albums which surprises me as they are often highly regarded. I suppose it’s a a challenge to keep a theme across many songs, which would explain why we only have 7 tracks on the album. Although The Wall would beg to differ.
Every song is well thought out and well written, not just verse chorus verse chorus. They are all pretty catchy. I started appreciating it more on my third listen. I find it takes a few times of listening to an album all the way through to really get into it. Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad is a stand out on the album, a slower song with a catchy chorus, one of the singles for this album. My only complaint is the last couple of songs are probably on weakest on the album.
Glad I finally took the time to gives this album a listen.
6. Come On Over - Shania Twain
Album starts off strong with Man! I Feel Like a Woman. I’ve heard the song before, but now that I’m listening to it more closely I can see it’s better than I realized. It’s one of those albums where you don’t feel like you want to skip any track, and the best tracks are very good, You’re Still the One, and That Don’t Impress me much I really love. Lots of tracks that aren’t singles that are very good. One of the things that these albums all have in common is you don’t need to skip many tracks, the album works as a whole.
7. Rumours - Fleetwood Mac
The first track is nothing special, but the second track, Dreams is one of my favorite songs ever. The album as a whole is mostly truly great songs with a few okay songs spattered in. Definitely one of the great albums of all time. The singles were “Go Your Own Way”, “Dreams”, “Don’t Stop”, “You Make Loving Fun” but I’ve heard other songs on the radio before, specifically “Gold Dust Woman”. The only problem is so many of the songs have gotten radio play, it’s like listening to a best off, not a lot new to discover here for me, but if you are unfamiliar with Fleetwood Mac this album is a real gold mine.
8. Saturday Night Fever - Bee Gees
The first track Stayin’ Alive is the anthem of the disco era. If this album was only Bee gees songs, it would be a perfect album. I’m not really into most of the other stuff with the exception of the KC and the Sunshine band song. There’s a couple of classical songs that were turned into disco versions which are kind of interesting to hear once or twice, but not something I really want all this into over and over again. Very much like The bodyguard soundtrack and Whitney, The Bee Gees are the main reason anybody’s getting this album. As a side note, I’ve actually been inside one of the Bee Gees houses, I got hired to work on a computer by someone who had purchased their house in Miami after unfortunately one of the died. They had houses all next to each other. Very nice houses I might add.
KC and the Sunshine Band’s Boogie Shoes is a standout among all the other non Bee Gee songs. I don’t really like Disco Inferno.
9. Hotel California - Eagles
The first song is hotel California which is one of the best songs ever written. The rest of the songs are good, enjoyable songs. Good melodies, well written, the last song, The Last Resort is a very strong finish to the album. Probably the second best song. Unfortunately, the song Hotel California really overshadows the rest of the album, there’s nothing even in the same league. I feel like it should have been the last track. Better to finish strong.
One of the things that is hard about reviewing these older albums is there’s something about music that doesn’t work outside of the time that it came out in. I remember specifically listening to Nine Inch Nails’ Pretty Hate Machine when it came out and I loved the whole thing. It felt like music that was being written from the future. But as I listen to it now that I’m older, it feels like it belongs to a very specific time.
So with albums like Hotel California it’s hard to give a truly accurate review of what it must have been like when it came out and became one of the best-selling albums of all time. It is a good album and I’m definitely going to listen to hotel California many more times in my life. The other songs I enjoyed listening to but I don’t think I’d listen to this album again. I can see why people liked this album though, you can listen to the whole thing all the way through, no bad songs.
10. 21 - Adele
A lot of the songs on this album are powerful and sad at the same time. They’re all catchy but the ones that were released as singles stand out.
I would bet that most of the sales from this album came from people hearing “Someone Like You”, this song is excellent and stands out from all the songs on the album. I try to listen to any album at least a couple times before I decide if I like it or not, one thing about this when I first heard it I thought I was going to like more than I did. Not to say that I don’t like it.
What I learned from this was most music doesn’t stand the test of time, but every one of these albums have at least one song on them that I enjoy listening to as much today as when I first heard it.