I was listening to the radio the other day at work and one of my favorite lines ever came through the speaker and tickled the erogenous zone in my ear:

“Hey, this is Chad from Nickelback and you’re listening to ….”

You can insert any station in there, it doesn’t matter what their format is, because Nickelback transcends musical classification/formats.

I started thinking about Chad, his sweet perm thing, and Nickelback’s music. It’s shitty music. Almost everyone I know believes this to be true. Why then, have they sold 12.5 million albums in the US alone? Does anyone reading this know anyone who has bought any of their albums? I don’t think I do.

Anyway, while looking up how many records they’ve sold, I came across the lists of all-time record sales, and I found it interesting.

For instance, the #1 album in US sales of all time is…. The Eagles (Greatest Hits 1971-1975). These dudes sold 29 million albums of their best songs written in a 4 year period. 29,000,000, incidentally, happens to be the population of Iraq (28,993,000). They are followed by Michael Jackson (Thriller), Led Zeppelin (Led Zeppelin IV), Pink Floyd (The Wall), and AC/DC (Back in Black). Only 2 of the top five bands/artists are actually American.

The Eagles actually have the #15 album as well, with Hotel California. Hotel California sold 16 million albums, the same amount as Elton John’s greatest hits, Physical Graffiti by Led Zeppelin, No Fences by Garth Brooks, Alanis Morrissette’s Jagged Little Pill and the Hootie and the Fucking Blowfish opus, Cracked Rear-View. Hootie may have been my biggest WTF moment, but others soon followed, like the Backstreet Boys with 14 million sold (Backstreet Boys), then another 13 million with Millennium, which tied with Britney Spears and …Baby One More Time. Speakerboxx/The Love Below, possibly their worst album, sold 11 million copies. For how big of a celebrity Madonna is, I would have thought she would have sold more than 10 million of a single album of hers, but she never did. Two of her albums hit 10 million, the same total as Linkin Park and the Lion King soundtrack.

As far as cumulative albums sales go though, Madonna ranks #13 with 63 million albums sold, the Beatles rank first with 169 million. The top five, in fact, is the Beatles, Elvis Presley, Garth Brooks, Led Zeppelin and The Eagles. Garth Brooks is the only one that I and most of you can say that we lived in the period in which he/they performed. Mariah Carey is 16^th, one spot ahead of Michael fucking Jackson. Mariah Carey has sold 61.5 million records in the US. Does anyone reading this currently own a Mariah Carey album? Did you know Sade has sold more albums (22.5 million) in the US than Greenday (22 million), Credence Clearwater Revival (22 million), Jimi Hendrix (22 million) or Genesis (21.5 million)? That sounds like the work of the Brain Fucklers.

So what to make out of all of this?

I really can’t say, but Nickelback’s selling 12.5 million albums kind of took a back seat when I saw some of the other batshit that sold more. DMX (14 million)? The Offspring (14.5)? Madness. The buying habits of the American music listeners is(are?) something I'll probably never understand, especially when it comes to entertainment. The fact that Snoop Dogg has only sold 12 million albums, 500,000 less than Nickelback and 4 million less than Limp Bizkit tells me that.