I was throwing away a newspaper and noticed this from the NYT obit on Richard Wright: “Pink Floyd’s 1979 album, “The Wall,” eventually sold 23 million copies in the United States.”

The album has been certified for 23 times platinum by the RIAA, but the RIAA doubles certs for double albums. So it’s really about 11 million. Weird the paper’s copy editing desk doesn’t know stuff like that. (And, of course, the band and its record company are never going to call in a correction.)

While researching this I just came upon Idolator’s essay on the same issue. It’s a terrific distillation of the problem by Chris Molanphy. He strips off the double-album dross and comes up with this revised chart of the RIAA’s top sellers:

THE REVISIONIST, SENSIBLE ALL-TIME LIST
29 Their Greatest Hits 1971–1975, The Eagles
27 Thriller, Michael Jackson
23 Led Zeppelin IV, Led Zeppelin
22 Back in Black, AC/DC
20 Come on Over, Shania Twain
19 Rumours, Fleetwood Mac
17 Boston
17 The Bodyguard, Whitney Houston (Soundtrack)
17 No Fences, Garth Brooks
16 Cracked Rear View, Hootie & the Blowfish
16 Greatest Hits, Elton John
16 Jagged Little Pill, Alanis Morissette
16 Hotel California, The Eagles
16 Physical Graffiti, Led Zeppelin
15 Born in the U.S.A., Bruce Springsteen
15 Appetite for Destruction, Guns ‘N Roses
15 Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd
15 Greatest Hits, Journey
15 Supernatural, Santana
14 Ropin’ the Wind, Garth Brooks
14 …Baby One More Time, Britney Spears
14 Greatest Hits, Simon & Garfunkel
14 Backstreet Boys
14 Metallica
14 Bat Out of Hell, Meat Loaf

(Physical Graffiti is crossed about because he mistakenly included it in his revised list, though it’s a double LP.)

I would add only a few things. One, the RIAA certifications are based on shipments reported by labels, not actual sales, so the number of pieces sold is by definition lower than whatever whatever total has been shipped. Second, the totals of the pre-SoundScan era are suspect to this day. It’s hard to believe Tapestry, the signal album of its era, has only sold ten million copies, for example.*

There are a couple of other aspects that should be considered when thinking about these figures. The first of course is changes in population; there are half again as many potential album buyers today as there were in 1970. Individual albums make up that deficit over time, as successive generations have te opportuity to buy it, but extra credit should be given to the records that penetrated deeply into a much smaller audience pool.

And there’s also the cultural evolution aspects of the early rock era (and, to be fair, the hip-hop and alt-rock eras as well); it should be noted that Elvis Presley, the Beatles and the Stones, to note just three obvious examples, had to create an audience, something Shania Twain didn’t have to dirty her hands doing.

And finally, since we are now in the iTunes era, barring some fluke phenomenon it’s doubtful that any record released today will ever challenge the current inhabitants of that top ten; too many potential buyers will just buy the individual tracks on Tunes. I think Molanphy should take his chart one farther, and remove greatest hits albums as well. Let Thriller reign!

* And on the other side of the equation, the RIAA’s list of top sellers has just a couple of Elvis Presley titles on it, though he’s always cited as the bestselling king. A huge proportion of his alleged sales are solely attributable to the fake platinums he would garner from initial shipments.