Who rocks the world?

October 29, 2005 8:12 PM

Empirically speaking - Who are the most popular musical artists of the modern era (e.g., since 1955)?

I'm able to find data on the most popular albums of all time (number one is The Eagles, Greatest Hits); but I want to know - all things considered - who the most popular artists of all time are. To answer this question precicely, I would think you would need, at the very least, an ordered count of total combined album sales (which I can't find). You may need to look at the popularity of live shows (which may be even harder to find and incorporate into the results). Finally, you may also need to control for longevity... maybe average album sales per 5-year period or something like that.

That last one might be taking it too far. But - with the best data available, who are the top several?

posted by crapples to Media & Arts (26 answers total)

Throw in the singles era vs. album era, which makes numeric comparisons almost impossible.
posted by smackfu at 8:19 PM on October 29, 2005

You may need to look at the popularity of live shows

That's a tough one too, since the logistics/number of venues/methods of management haven't been at all consistent through that time period.
posted by Miko at 8:30 PM on October 29, 2005

You may need to look at the popularity of live shows

That's a tough one too, since the logistics/number of venues/methods of management/ticket prices relative to median income, etc., haven't been at all consistent through that time period.
posted by Miko at 8:31 PM on October 29, 2005

Are you asking for data, or guesses, or what? I don't have any of the former, and as for the latter, I say The Beatles.
posted by ludwig_van at 9:22 PM on October 29, 2005

Michael Jackson has set tremendous records that have yet to be broken to this day
posted by airnxtz at 9:25 PM on October 29, 2005

one other thing, The Eagles, Greatest Hits album is the number one album of all time here in the US, but worldwide that title belongs to Michael Jackson's Thriller album
posted by airnxtz at 9:27 PM on October 29, 2005

What's the point? More constructively: Why 1955? Pretty arbitrary, I'd say. You're probably going to end up with the Beatles at the top -- but if you're throwing concerts into the mix, do tribute bands count? They are, after all, a function of a band's popularity. What about covers? When jazz musicians play tunes by the Beatles or Nirvana or whomever, does that factor? How about newspaper and magazine articles? Anthrax, at the height of their popularity, caused a KISS revival by citing them as a primary influence in numerous interviews. Grammies? Various critic and reader polls? How about solo careers? "Sir" Paul McCartney's career is a function of the Beatles' popularity, right? Ditto George Harrison? Yoko Ono? (Which brings us back to...yeah. It's going to be the Beatles.)
posted by cribcage at 9:41 PM on October 29, 2005

Well here's a list of the Top-Earning Dead Celebrities from Forbes.com - quite a few musicians in there, and I can't think of any living celebrities who could beat Elvis: 55 albums, 38 Top 10 hits, 79 weeks at No 1.... That's pretty damn popular.
posted by forallmankind at 9:47 PM on October 29, 2005

If you're looking for worldwide data, I'd be willing to bet the answer isn't the Beatles after all. Probably Michael Jackson?
posted by electric_counterpoint at 9:52 PM on October 29, 2005

The Beatles are definitely a good answer for this, and probably the expected answer, but it's not without good reason. Pink Floyd would also make a good contender for this. According to Wikipedia, 1 in every 14 people under the age of 50 in the United States owns a copy of the album. While the Eagles are the best selling, Dark Side of The Moon is the 2nd best selling album in the United States.
posted by phr4gmonk3y at 9:56 PM on October 29, 2005

Hrm. I can't even name or hum an Eagle's tune. Beatles? Sure. MJ? Easy. Its sort of surprising to me, that they appear to be best selling. Must be generational thing.
posted by Atreides at 9:58 PM on October 29, 2005

Good bets:
The Beatles, Elvis, Michael Jackson, and Madonna. On a good day, the Rolling Stones might find their way onto that list, too.
posted by Jon-o at 10:18 PM on October 29, 2005

Atreides: If you ever have the (mis)fortune of visiting the corner in Winslow, Arizona, you'll be able to name and hum an Eagles tune. (The song is looped there continuously.)

As to the original question, my knee-jerk response would be to of course add Elvis and Sinatra to the short list.
posted by Rash at 10:27 PM on October 29, 2005

One reason the Eagles have the best-selling album is due to the progression of technology. The generation listening to the Eagles (and Pink Floyd, I would imagine) first bought the album on vinyl, and might have also had a copy on eight-track to listen to in their cars. With the advent of cassette tapes and then compact discs as the dominant modes of listening to music, many people bought the same album they already owned in other formats. Of course, it could just be because of their red-state appeal.
posted by kyleg at 10:32 PM on October 29, 2005

Sinatra, Elvis, Beatles, Jackson, Madonna, albeit perhaps not in that order. You'd be hard-pressed to top any of them.

Related: how about non-English speaking artists? Anyone have a guess or answer on that?
posted by davidmsc at 10:48 PM on October 29, 2005

Best answer: Wikipedia has a List of best-selling music artists article, although it's one of the diciest to cite, since it's perpetually in Neutral-point-of-view court, so to speak. Although there's a dedicated crew of editors devoted to the mission of producing an honest accounting, they're chiefly hampered by vandals and uber-fans who constantly try to game the article (replacing #1 with Ashlee Simpson is child's play; these guys try things like replacing #41 with Blink 182, because they last longer). Even these efforts are hampered by the outright lack of any authoritative method of accounting for album sales. At least the movie industry has long relied on certain centralized information brokers, and they heavily police each other. But music sales are only reported by labels incidentally when they're happy with them or seeking an industry accolade like a gold or platinum record, and it's especially difficult to account for "cult" or perennial albums which have steady yet low annual sales ultimately totalling in the brazilians.

So, with that grain of salt, they list The Beatles and Elvis at #1 and #2 overall. That sounds about right, and is satisfying in a critical sense as well. I'm a little baffled that ABBA and Cliff Richard round out the top 4, but Madonna fits right in at 5.

Ultimately though I think you're throwing too many variables into the pot. Best album sales vs. best album sales is certainly one metric for measuring one artist against another, but best album sales vs. best concert revenues (or attendance) doesn't seem quite appropriate to me. I think you really can't do any better than making a number of separate lists that are as authoritative as possible, and live with the fact that they are going to be substantially different.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Rolling Stone 400 Greatest Albums
RIAA best-selling albums
Top 100 Albums (Critics' Choice) (1987)

Atreides: I find it difficult to believe you have no internal memory of "Take It Easy", "One of These Nights", "Hotel California" or "Heartache Tonight", although you may have failed to connect them in your mind with the Eagles.
posted by dhartung at 11:03 PM on October 29, 2005

I bet Celine Dion is on there too.
posted by fshgrl at 11:16 PM on October 29, 2005

Dark Side of The Moon is the 2nd best selling album in the United States.

Actually, it's the second best selling album world-wide and only the 17th in the USA.
posted by dobbs at 12:53 AM on October 30, 2005

Response by poster: Thanks for all of the thoughtful responses. As I've considered this, I think it's best to make it simple. Adding too many variables just confuses things. After I wrote the question above a friend sent me to this site. I don't know if it's authoritative or not, but it supposedly lists total album sales in descending order. If this infomation is correct, then the top three are The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and Garth Brooks. It's an interesting list.

My concern with controlling longevity still troubles me, though - because if Garth Brooks sells 100 million albums in 20 years, I think that could indicate more popularity than The Beatles selling 164 million in 40 years.

The bottom line is that popularity has to be operationalized somehow, and the list in the link above is probably as good as it's going to get.
posted by crapples at 4:35 AM on October 30, 2005

I remember that, I think in 1971, Elton John accounted for 2% of all record sales in the world. This is an incredible figure and has never been duplicated. Getting away from the Anglo/Americocentric approach, what about Umm Kalthum?
posted by TheRaven at 6:33 AM on October 30, 2005

I think there should be some population control factor as well. The fact that Garth Brooks sells 100 million albums from 1990 - 2005 versus Elvis' sales totals, whatever they are, should have a control for the amount of record-buying public each had to work with. In other words, I'd rather see something like 1 in 15 people had an Elvis album, and 1 in 22 had Garth Brooks...
posted by Slothrop at 7:08 AM on October 30, 2005

What might be more interesting than sales would be to do a worldwide, very-high-N survey where the interviewer sings or plays the beginning of some song and sees how many people can sing the next verse, or identify the song.

I betcha Elvis or the Beatles win in that case.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:21 AM on October 30, 2005

The Top 25 best-selling musicians at Amazon.com from 1995 to 2005, in order:

1. The Beatles
2. U2
3. Norah Jones
4. Diana Krall
5. Eva Cassidy
6. Frank Sinatra
7. Santana
8. Enya
9. Bob Dylan
10. Rolling Stones
11. Dave Matthews Band
12. Bruce Springsteen
13. Sarah McLachlan
14. Dixie Chicks
15. Josh Groban
16. Elton John
17. Rod Stewart
18. Pink Floyd
19. Jimmy Buffett
20. Celine Dion
21. Sting
22. Johnny Cash
23. Ray Charles
24. Van Morrison
25. Elvis Presley

posted by mbrubeck at 9:41 AM on October 30, 2005

What might be more interesting than sales would be to do a worldwide, very-high-N survey where the interviewer sings or plays the beginning of some song and sees how many people can sing the next verse, or identify the song.

I betcha Elvis or the Beatles win in that case.

My money's on Mildred and Patty 'Happy Birthday' Hill.
posted by box at 11:09 AM on October 30, 2005

I find it difficult to believe you have no internal memory of "Take It Easy", "One of These Nights", "Hotel California" or "Heartache Tonight", although you may have failed to connect them in your mind with the Eagles. -dhartung

I recognize the title of "Hotel California', but I couldn't hum it to save my life. I'll agree with you in that if I heard one of those songs, I'd recognize as having heard it before, but I still wouldn't be able to also recognize them as being the Eagles.

I don' know if I should be ashamed or not, but my musical knowledge of the 70's is simply rather weak. Alas, alas.
posted by Atreides at 1:55 PM on October 30, 2005

afroblanca: "Y'know, I've wondered about the Eagles thing too, before. Like how they always seem to make it into "most popular" or "best selling" lists, despite the fact that people generally see them as dated and annoying now."

"Most popular" or "best selling" lists rarely limit themselves to mid-twenties hipsters.
posted by Plutor at 5:54 AM on October 31, 2005