From the rest of the 70s, Heroes happens to be just over 1 million units sold, the pop star only million seller of the decade. While songs from all albums up to Heroes retain some relevance moving more than 4 million units together, the track list of Lodger seems to be completely forgotten for years.
As a reminder, the weighting is done with a 10 to 1 ratio between one album and one digital single.
Pin Ups (1973) – 23,000 equivalent albums
Sorrow – 75,000
Remaining Tracks – 75,000
Diamond Dogs (1974) – 120,000 equivalent albums
Rebel Rebel – 600,000
Remaining Tracks – 200,000
Young Americans (1975) – 195,000 equivalent albums
Young Americans – 500,000
Fame – 650,000
Remaining Tracks – 150,000
Station to Station (1976) – 60,000 equivalent albums
Golden Years – 200,000
Remaining Tracks – 200,000
Low (1977) – 60,000 equivalent albums
Sound And Vision – 200,000
Remaining Tracks – 200,000
Heroes (1977) – 165,000 equivalent albums
Heroes – 1,000,000
Remaining Tracks – 100,000
Lodger (1979) – 15,000 equivalent albums
Remaining Tracks – 100,000
The Greatest solo artist in history.
That will be Michael Jackson
Best selling solo artist of all time, but not most important or most influential solo artist of all time.
That’s just your opinion, mine is he is very overrated and his sales are poor considering he is supposed to be that good. Half a dozen very good songs doesn’t make you the greatest.
Yes, Jacksons sales and popularity are amazing and his influence immense but Bowie was way, way more diverse than Jackson.
It’s so irritating when people can’t wrap their heads around the fact that sales aren’t everything. Sales are great but they don’t indicate how inventive, creative, influential, etc. an artist was/is.
Who cares. Musical diversity and critical acclaim is so overrated.
Lots of people care, lots of people don’t want to listen to an artist who just releases the same sounding stuff over and over again.
As for critical acclaim, I couldn’t give a toss about it either.
“That’s just your opinion”
It’s all about opinions, except if you believe that talent should be measured by success, which would be very dumb.
Also the version of All The Young Dudes with Ian Hunter and Bowie on vocals on the Mott The Hoople page doesn’t show up on his features.
Just noticed that a number of Bowie songs have recently been been greyed out on spotify and their totals no longer show on the spotify tool report.They’re all on the albums Platinum Collection and Sound + Vision.
Also for some reason the songs credited to Bowie and the Spider on the Bowie at the Beeb album have a separate artist id??