Yearly Most Successful Female Album: The beginning (1960-1982)
1962 / 1963 – Females No More
No female album from 1962 or 1963 generated at least 5 million equivalent album sales. During these years no female album nor single went to #1 in the UK while the only US female #1 record came from a live album of old songs by Judy Garland. Brenda Lee remained popular with multiple Top 10 hits in both the US and the UK, but her albums weren’t selling much and they haven’t faced the test of time very well. The year 1963 was slightly better than the previous year thanks to one notable arrival: Barbra Streisand.
She issued two LPs in 1963 selling upwards of 1 million units with each of them. It was a tremendous achievement at the time. They had no physical single released though and their tracks have been forgotten for a long time. This low value brought to her catalog in the long run limits their impact.
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