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Right, I made this list because I'm a "diva's hater", very perceptive of you... And anyone with a functioning brain knew it was Spotify numbers btw.
Madonna had way more success than Whitney and Céline in Asia... You're right about Mariah though (20m albums vs. 30m).
Hi Tre!
I'll first answer this specific question about Aretha's 67 album and then answer the conversation as a whole about female artists.
So far, it's the biggest female album we have up to that date. Maybe surprisingly though, there are 3 real contenders to be ahead.
The first one is Brenda Lee's Merry Christmas from Brenda Lee which was the 1st LP to include her famous Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree. The track has outstanding results, but tbh I have never check Brenda's discography deep enough to have a realistic view of its total. I can't rule out that such a big track amassed many sales through various supports over the year.
Then in 1960 we have Etta James' At Last. This LP has the large majority of her career streams, and she sold a good amount of compilations over the years. Here too it's hard to put a definitive number without digging it, but 10m+ is likely.
The following year, Patsy Cline's Showcase was released. It has the strongest songs from her compilations, which include her Diamond Greatest Hits. Showcase should be past 10m too.
If we include the Supremes, it would be interesting to check totals of Supremes' A Go Go and Where Did Our Love Go? which include their biggest tracks.
All in all, while I have no precise idea of their sales and even if none is a clear favorite against Aretha's hit album, it's quite likely that at least one of these is ahead.
That's definitely the correct 'moment'. To be straightforward, females became great sellers with MTV. That's when the visual element became important that labels started to invest more on them, and Madonna quickly proved the recipe valid so they jumped into it even more.
Then, artists linked to an image have in general a shorter career, which makes it look like there weren't that many big female artists in the 80s. In reality, it's just that we remember the two biggest (Madonna and Whitney), but there were a lot of others.
It all gets clear when we check Billboard's yearly album charts.
In 1982, female albums in the top 50:
2 Go Go's Beauty & the Beat
8 Stevie Nicks Bella Donna
15 Olivia NJ Physical
22 Joan Jett & the Blackhearts I Love Rock n Roll
33 Juice Newton Juice
45 Diana Ross Why Do Fools Fall In Love
48 Pat Benatar Precious Time
It's worth noting that by this time standards, 1982 was an outstanding year for female artists. Yet, what's interesting here is that 3 of the main 4 are rock artists, which aren't in the "diva" family that is though of nowadays when talking about female singers. Then we have Olivia at 15 and the remaining ones at 33 and lower.
1983 is clearly the pivotal year, with Jane Fonda being the flagship of the change:
7 Jane Fonda Workout record
10 Olivia NJ Greatest Hits 2
16 Pat Benatar Get Nervous
The next female album is way down at 60 (Laura Branigan). A non-singer takes the lead, the iconic workout record by Jane Fonda, which perfectly illustrates the arrival of visual elements in the music industry. Then Olivia was still enjoying the post-Grease madness, and Pat Benatar was continuing to be the main female force of this period. We can note that suddenly, female artists doing "male music", rock-related, had suddenly gone.
In 1984, the new generation of female stars was already here.
11 Cyndi Lauper She's So Unusual
13 Linda Ronstadt What's New
14 The Pointer Sisters Break Out
17 Madonna Madonna
39 Tina Turner Private Dancer
49 Laura Branigan Self Control
50 Go Go's Talk Show
It continued in 1985 with albums bigger and bigger:
3 Madonna Like a Virgin
5 Tina Turner Private Dancer
16 The Pointer Sisters Break Out
24 Sade Diamond Life
25 Madonna Madonna
29 Whitney Houston Whitney Houston
43 Diana Ross Swept Away
47 Mary Jane Girls Only Four You
The continuous success of female artists and the example of Tina Turner led major to invest on former female stars too, so in 1986 we see strong performances by Barbra Streisand, Patti LaBelle, and Aretha Franklin's return.
6 Janet Jackson Control
8 Sade Promise
10 Miami Sound Machine (Gloria Estefan) Primitive Love
12 Barbra Streisand The Broadway Album
32 Patti LaBelle Winner in You
37 Madonna True Blue
41 Stevie Nicks Rock a Little
46 Aretha Franklin Who's Zoomin' Who
By 1987, they were already flooding charts:
5 Janet Jackson Control
9 Anita Baker Rapture
11 Madonna True Blue
22 Whitney Houston Whitney Houston
23 Whitney Houston Whitney
29 Expose Exposure
37 Tina Turner Break Every Rule
39 Cyndi Lauper True Colors
41 Jody Watley Jody Watley
48 Aretha Franklin Aretha
With artists like Expose or Jody Watley, we start seeing artists which are nor superstars in the making nor legends' revivals, just new pop stars that weren't going to last, which reflects well that it was easier to make it big as a female. It got even more obvious in 1988, with both Debbie Gibson and Tiffany in the top 10 and many names completely forgotten by now which made the top 50:
7 Debbie Gibson Out of the Blue
9 Tiffany Tiffany
12 Whitney Houston Whitney
13 Gloria Estefan Let It Loose
17 Belinda Carlisle Heaven On Earth
35 Jody Watley Jody Watley
36 Pebbles Pebbles
37 Sade Stronger Than Pride
39 Expose Exposure
41 Taylor Dayne Tell It To My Heart
50 Lita Ford Lita
If we caricature, in the history of music we used to have the "musicians" and the "voices", which the former being heavily male-dominated for various reasons and they also led in terms of importance vs the voices. Since mid-80s, we saw coming the "faces", and there female artists reign supreme. Obviously it's a caricature, there are voices who can play instruments, faces who sing perfectly well, or voices which are good looking, but this sums up pretty well the MTV switch which impacted the music industry from 83/84.
She did? I thought Celine destroyed Madonna in Asia. Especially considering her peak was the mid to late 90s when the Asian market was much bigger than it was in the 80s/early 90s.
Really? I always thought Celine was massive in Asia, she was one of the two Western artist to top the Oricon singles chart. But maybe I remember wrong
8 albums out of 50 isn't exactly "on par" though...
If we just focus on the top sellers, something clearly changed in the mid-90s when it became the norm to have multiple female albums in the yearly top 5 (it happened 22 times in the last 30 years). A few examples :
1996
1 Alanis Morissette
2 Mariah Carey
3 Céline Dion
4 Waiting To Exhale (soundtrack, female R&B artists)
5 Fugees
1997
1 Spice Girls
2 No Doubt
3 Céline Dion
5 Jewel
2003
2 Norah Jones
3 Shania Twain
4 Dixie Chicks
5 Avril Lavigne
2011
1 Adele
2 Taylor Swift
3 Lady Gaga
5 Susan Boyle
2019
1 Billie Eilish
2 Ariana Grande
3 Lady Gaga (A Star Is Born)
4 Taylor Swift
To Love You More was a monster hit in Japan (2nd best selling international single ever) but overall she "only" sold 7m albums vs. 10m for Madonna, despite Madonna peaking in the mid-80s (smaller market). In the rest of Asia they sold about the same (10m albums) with I assume much more single sales for Madonna.
how is 130 million very close to 180 million? in which world is a 50 million difference considered very close?
Yes but i think artist like Madonna catered to male audience as well , especially with her more mature artistic albums like like a prayer or ray of light
Thank you very much ! I think it's fair to say Aretha Franklin and Barbra Streisand were the biggest female singers of the 60's.
Definitely. Aretha was notoriously competitive with other female singers but I read that she considered Barbra her equal and admired her.
Obviously The Supremes were a group, but id say they were the biggest female singers of the 60s.
