The band Queen released their “Greatest Hits” album more than 40 years ago – and it’s still breaking records today.
No band has ever done that before: Queen has broken the seven million album sales mark in Great Britain. This makes the band’s greatest hits album the most successful album of all time in the UK. This was recently confirmed by the official chart site “Official Charts”.
The album was released in 1981 and contains legendary songs like “Bohemian Rhapsody”, “We Will Rock You” and “Don’t Stop Me Now”. The seven million copies sold are based on physical and digital purchases of the album, as well as including streams.
Queen feels ‘humbled and honored’
The band is happy about the record. In a YouTube video, guitarist Brian May (75) and drummer Roger Taylor (72) talk about the milestone in band and music history. “We’re here to bring you the happy news that Queen’s ‘Greatest Hits’ album has sold over seven million copies, which has never been done before,” May said proudly. “Thank you, we appreciate that!”
Taylor jokes, “The British people and their infinitely great taste has made [the album] the best selling album in history. Thank you very much, we are humbled and honored.”
Not the first record for the Queen album: as early as 2014, it became the most commercially successful album in Great Britain with sales of six million at the time. Only digital and physical purchases of the album were included, but no streaming numbers. As of today, “Greatest Hits” has now been streamed 1.26 billion times.
It wasn’t until early June that the band set another record in their home country with the album. “Greatest Hits” had officially spent 1,000 weeks in the UK Top 100 Albums Chart at that point. This makes Queen the first British band to achieve this milestone. According to the “Official Charts”, they are behind ABBA and Bob Marley and The Wailers in the overall ranking. ABBA’s best-of album “Gold – Greatest Hits” had ranked 1,048 weeks at that time, “Legend” by Bob Marley and The Wailers 1,032 weeks.
