List Of Best-selling Albums In The United States
This is a list of the best-selling albums in the United States based on RIAA certification. The criteria are that the album must have been published (including self-publishing by the artist), and the album must have shipped at least 10 million units in the United States. Groupings are based on different certification benchmarks, the highest being for certification of at least 20–29 times Platinum, and the lowest being for certification of 10–14 times Platinum. Albums are listed in order of certification (highest to lowest), and order of release date (earliest to most recent). This list contains any type of album, including studio, greatest hits, compilation, live albums, various artists, soundtrack and remix.
As a result of the RIAA's methodology of counting each disc in a multi-disc set as one unit toward certification, most double albums on the list—such as Pink Floyd's The Wall and Outkast's Speakerboxxx/The Love Below—have been certified with a number double the number of copies sold. Such albums have their "real" shipments indicated. Conversely, the certification level for double albums that fit onto one compact disc such as the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack reflect the actual number of copies sold. Some notable double LPs that would appear on this list if counted as two units are the Grease soundtrack (8x Platinum), Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (7× Platinum) and Peter Frampton's Frampton Comes Alive! (6× Platinum).
Read more about List Of Best-selling Albums In The United States: 20–29× Platinum, 15–19× Platinum, 10–14× Platinum
Famous quotes containing the words list of, united states, list, united and/or states:
“Religious literature has eminent examples, and if we run over our private list of poets, critics, philanthropists and philosophers, we shall find them infected with this dropsy and elephantiasis, which we ought to have tapped.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Today’s difference between Russia and the United States is that in Russia everybody takes everybody else for a spy, and in the United States everybody takes everybody else for a criminal.”
—Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)
“Weigh what loss your honor may sustain
If with too credent ear you list his songs,
Or lose your heart, or your chaste treasure open
To his unmastered importunity.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Fortunately, the time has long passed when people liked to regard the United States as some kind of melting pot, taking men and women from every part of the world and converting them into standardized, homogenized Americans. We are, I think, much more mature and wise today. Just as we welcome a world of diversity, so we glory in an America of diversity—an America all the richer for the many different and distinctive strands of which it is woven.”
—Hubert H. Humphrey (1911–1978)
“The line that I am urging as today’s conventional wisdom is not a denial of consciousness. It is often called, with more reason, a repudiation of mind. It is indeed a repudiation of mind as a second substance, over and above body. It can be described less harshly as an identification of mind with some of the faculties, states, and activities of the body. Mental states and events are a special subclass of the states and events of the human or animal body.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)