1976 – Barbra Streisand – A Star Is Born
By 1976, Streisand was arguably the most popular female singer in North American since her debut. Her sales abroad were still quite limited though. The soundtrack A Star Is Born confirmed once again her status in her homeland while also opening to her the doors of international stardom.
In the US, this chart topping LP became her top seller album to date with an impressive total of 5 million units sold. In the UK, the album was her first #1 album and also the first selling upwards Platinum status, it came close to a million sales. The story was the same more often than not since it was also by far her biggest album to date in continental Europe, Latin America, Asia and in Australasia. The single Evergreen was a #1 hit, it also figured on various best of albums in later years. With 8 million sales for the original album plus all subsequent packages, this record is comfortably the most successful of a female from 1976 with a massive 15 million equivalent album sales overall.
Challengers
In all fairness, although Diana Ross and Linda Ronstadt got successful records that year again, they do not come close of Streisand‘s effort. The big international story was the ground breaking smash of Swedish band ABBA, with their terrific hits Dancing Queen and Money, Money, Money from the album Arrival. Of course, the band isn’t eligible in this female-only listing.
For 1970 would Joni Mitchell’s Ladies of the Canyon. not be a contender as it contains her biggest hit “Big Yellow Taxi” which has over 117m streams on so would have a decent share of her compilation sales as compared to Diana’s debut as Ain’t No Mountain High Enough doesn’t even have 50m compared to Diana and Supremes tracks which have many more
Kind of disappointing how low Barbra Streisand stream is today considering how huge she was back then. Yet today even somebody like Cher and Tina Turner and Dolly Parton would outstream her by a significant margin, when I dont think any of those girls are even close to the total CSPC that she managed to produce.
what are your estimates for pat benatar’s crimes of passion