What are the best selling albums of all time?

Take a wild guess what the best selling album of all time is…

If you guessed Michael Jackson's Thriller, you nailed it, with well over 40 million albums sold worldwide.  While the King of Pop may be an obvious choice to top this list, there are a lot of artists who downright shocked me with their presence in the pantheon of best sellers.

By the way, the word 'album' is key there because this isn’t just individual songs, and these days, artists and labels tend to push individual songs as hits.  Here I list all top sellers with at least 20 million, with my commentary after the charts.  These sales numbers are straight from Wikipedia.com and cover both certified sales and claimed sales, which usually are fairly close.

It's MJ and no one else is even close, though I do see a lot of classic rock albums selling like hot cakes.  I never knew the Bee Gees were THE big thing, and Whitney Houston killed it with the top selling movie soundtrack of all time!

Stepping down to the 30-39 million range, I can't believe Shania Twain's Come On Over sold almost as much as Thriller (claimed.)  Alanis Morissette is a huge surprise, too.  The Beatles are logical choices for the list, but considering their longevity, I thought they'd be higher - but there is a huge discrepancy between certified and claimed sales for them.  Titanic rings the bell again for movie soundtracks.  Michael Jackson shows up again twice, and finally we see Guns N' Roses representing at 21.3 million certified sales for Appetite for Destruction, a great album!

Wow - where to begin?  I thought Bob Marley, with 25 million sales, would be higher considering that is THE album that introduced reggae to the international community and has been around for 30+ years.  The BackStreet Boys cashed in HUGE a couple times.  Brittany Spears and the Spice Girls go to show that sales have nothing to do with talent.  Who exactly are these 24 million Linkin Park fans that bought albums?  Is it the same 23 million who (allegedly) purchased Ace of Base an album?  Surprising that Madonna is only on there once and it was for Ray of Light.  And there are only two albums to make this list from the rap genre - Eminem (we could have guessed that) but also TLC!  Pour one out for Left Eye!

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