With the news of Metallica's "Black Album" breaking the 16 million mark in sales, by far its most successful album, I began looking into the sales figures of other huge artists. What I found was that in many cases, an artist's top selling album isn't necessarily its best. Here are seven artists where that's precisely the case, starting with the band that inspired this list...
1. Metallica - Metallica (The Black Album) (1991)
Metallica's "Black Album" may be the best selling album of the SoundScan era (1991 to today), but if you tell a thrash metal fan that it's your favorite, you'll probably end up with a broken nose. Metallica adopted a more accessible sound for the album, which of course led the band to being accused of "selling out," which was basically the kiss of death in the '90s. Though I'm not even a big Metallica fan, the band's earliest albums (Kill 'Em All, Ride the Lightning, Master of Puppets) are clearly its best.
2. Bruce Springsteen - Born in the USA (1984)
Most diehard Springsteen fans will tell you that his greatest album is his commercial breakthrough Born to Run, but you'll probably hear some support for Darkness on the Edge of Town or Nebraska as well. However, the one album you won't hear as a favorite is his best selling, Born in the USA. It's absolutely one of his classics, but the slick pop production makes it seem less authentic than his previous albums.
3. David Bowie - Let's Dance (1983)
Much like Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie achieved his greatest commercial success only when he embraced a more mainstream pop sound in the '80s. Bowie's top selling album is 1983's Let's Dance, though very few Bowie fans would call it his best. Nearly all of his '70s albums are considered superior, such as The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Station to Station, or my personal favorite, Low.
4. The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (2002)
Though the Flaming Lips signed to Warner Brothers in 1992 and had a hit song in 1993 with "She Don't Use Jelly," the band didn't achieve its current mainstream status until 2002 with the release of its top selling album Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. As excellent as the album is, however, the band's true masterpiece, the heavenly The Soft Bulletin, was released three years earlier.
5. Neil Young - Harvest (1972)
The best-selling album of 1972 was Neil Young's excellent country/folk LP Harvest, which ended up being the best-selling album of his career. Though the album contains some of Young's biggest hits, as well as my favorite Neil Young song (the title track), the album as a whole isn't nearly as consistent as either of the albums Young released before and after: After the Gold Rush and On the Beach.
6. Nirvana - Nevermind (1991)
Though most mainstream music publications like Rolling Stone consider Nevermind to be Nirvana's greatest work, most alternative and punk fans know that Nirvana's brutal follow-up In Utero represents the band in its raw, truest form.
7. The Beatles - Abbey Road (1969)
The Beatles are one of those bands that have so many huge hits and masterful albums that there's not really a consensus as to what its best album is, or what its signature song might be. For whatever reason, the band's 1969 album Abbey Road is its best selling LP, and though you can meet plenty of people who think it's the Beatles' best, I'm a bigger fan of Revolver, the perfect cross between the band's concise early years and its sprawling later years.
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