Open Wide For Mama!

Birds!, originally uploaded by http://andrewskelton.net.

Reading the music press today, as I do most days, I happened upon an article outlined the best selling CDs of the past 30 years (I guess since CDs were first introduced (the first CD being released in 1982, in Japan and was Billy Joel’s 52nd Street)) and there were some surprising names on the list, certainly not ones I would have expected to be on the list – in fact there were more Indie bands than I would have guessed. Top of the pile was Gold by Abba, their greatest hits album that managed to hit the top spot in no less than four separate occasions, selling over 4 millions CDs. The number 6 entry in the chart was one I would never have guessed, Dido with her 2006 “No Angel” album.. I knew she was fairly popular but never 3 million records popular! I would have never guessed in a million years that The Verve, Keane, Travis and Snow Patrol would have made the list, all selling over 2.2 millions each, that’s a lot of records for what I have previously thought of as minor bands. Of course one of the biggest bands, Coldplay, have no less than 3 albums in the list, with cumulative sales of over 7.9 millions records. Interestingly (or not as the case may be, Dear Reader) when returning to these fair shores tens years ago, after travelling the world, it was “Yellow” by Coldplay that I most wanted to hear first. Now seeing the figures it’s not so much yellow as “green”.

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