The two top selling albums are Thriller and the Eagles greatest hits album. I’ve wondered why the Eagles album sells more than other greatest hits albums and almost every album.
Speaking for someone responsible for two of them… Until the Hotel California album, the Eagles were just a group with a few good songs. Then with Hotel California they became one of my favorites and then I went back to their earlier music. To me they had some very good singles but so-so albums (to me). The greatest hits album basically had all I wanted.
Then when it was time to get digital versions of my music the required albums for the Eagles were their greatest hits, Hotel California and The Long Run. Then add about four or five other songs and my Eagles music is complete.
It was the first album I bought with my own money, and looking back at the track listing, there isn’t a dud on it. Having said that, there’s some dispute about the claim of top selling album.
The 1975-77 period seems to account for a lot a crazy sales figures in individual Rock albums. Frampton Comes Alive, Rumors, Bat out of Hell, Saturday Night Fever, Hotel California. Everybody I knew back then had all of these albums. Our tastes were a lot less diverse and segmented back then and we REALLY liked physically owning music.
I was a Target cashier in the early 1980s, and it seemed that not a day went by that I didn’t ring up a copy of that album with the dusty blue cover and a cow skull on it.
I think this is a reason for its popularity. As a purchase, it fits a lot of bills, so to speak. Safe bet as a gift for someone else and as an addition to your own record collection. Holds different kinds of appeal for those who aren’t necessarily among the group’s biggest fans. And, “had a full album’s worth of Greatest Hits” as said upthread.
I don’t think there’s any dispute. Thriller is the best selling album worldwide, but the Eagle’s greatest hits is the best selling counting US sales only. But there’s no argument that Thriller holds the world’s top spot.
OK – I never miss an opportunity to tell one of my favorite stories.
Ca. 1976, when I was working in Hollywood, California, I got a phone call from a publisher. She said, “We have a new album being released tomorrow, and we forgot to copyright all the songs! Can you help?”
Since I specialized in writing lead sheets, the primary way to copyright songs under the latest (1909) law, I sure could. But it took me about an hour and a half to produce a single, finished lead sheet, and my usual time was about a week, sufficient for most music publishers.
“How many songs on the album?”
“About 10. But we need it right away!”
"That would be a rush job, at double fee, about 48 hours. OK?’
“Sure, sure. Can you do it faster?”
“What’s the name of the album?”
“Hotel California, by the Eagles.”
“No problem. But it will be triple fee.”
My colleague and I stayed up all night, delivered the lead sheets the next day, then sacked out. Just another typical rush job, but one I’ll never forget!
You got ripped off. I got 12 for a penny from BMG!
Doing a tiny bit of research, it turns out they’re the same company now; BMG bought out Columbia House in 2005, and they were subsequently bought by another company and became “Direct Brands, Inc.” They stopped selling music in 2009 but their “negative option billing” business model still lives on in DVD and Blu-Ray sales.
Presumably, they filed my work with the standard USA copyright application, as most publishers did pre-1977, when the US law changed. Unless they were Ninja’d by someone else (unlikely), they obtained the copyright they expected. I haven’t heard of any dispute.
I don’t exactly understand either. In my experience, the writer files for copyright, not the publisher. And why did you have to write out new lead sheets, weren’t there existing ones? I mean, the guys who wrote the songs must have written something down. And if the album was coming out the next day, dd that mean no copyrights were in effect on the day of release? The Copyright Office doesn’t turn around applications overnight.
Also not sure why it would take 2 guys all night to write lead sheets for 10 Eagles songs. We’re not talking Beethoven here. Maybe I’m missing something.
Most professional writers, ca. <1976, did not file for copyright; their publishers did, as they were (typically, by that time) under contract to the publishers. Performers were often more concerned with recording songs than the esoteric detail of the copyright & publishing business.
The writers (the Eagles) like many rock artists, typically did their arrangements “by head” or in the studio. They may not have had anything written down, and many rock musicians read music little, if at all. Between the concept of an Eagles’ song and the final recording, there may not have been any written music. (exception: sweetening tracks)
So by the time of the final album release, it’s entirely possible that no written music existed of the songs other than a scratch chord chart. Not only was that possible, it was common, which gave me an occupation – writing down what was only, until then, a sound. I made a pretty decent living filling that gap.
The applicable copyright law was from 1909. In 1909, audio recordings, although they existed, were not a serious medium. If you had written a new song <1909, your medium for reproduction was the printed “piano/vocal” sound sheet. Millions were sold. Sound recordings, not so much. Logically, when the law was codified, a written copy (“the best copy”) of your composition was required for deposit in the US Government Copyright Office.
If you, in 1909, could write music, you filed that with the CO. If not, you hired someone to write down what you played on your instrument in some readable form.
A lead (pronounced “leed”) sheet, for those who are not familiar with the term, is defined as follows (my definition). It contains, in written form, the following:
[ol][li]The melody, if any, in standard musical notation, [/li][li]The** harmony**, if any, usually expressed in chordal symbols,[/li][li]The lyrics, if any.[/ol][/li]
A lead sheet (theoretically) is sufficient for a professional musician to recreate the original composition. Obviously, given the 60+ years that had elapsed since the 1909 law, there was much to be desired. Nevertheless, a lead sheet was a useful tool for many purposes, including the arranger of the sweetening charts.
The US copyright office accepted lead sheets for song copyrights for a very long time, so long that Hollywood publishers came to use lead sheets for the de facto copyright medium. I made an occupation of writing lead sheets for pop songwriters; you write a song, you have me make a lead sheet, and with a simple recording, you are good to go.
(Lead sheets became so much the de facto copyright submission medium that when I was hired to write lead sheets for John Williams’ full-orchestral scores for Star Wars, I convinced 20th Century Fox studios that a Xerox of Williams’ scores was a much better CO submission. I lost a lot of money on that one.)
Consider the circumstances. Neither of us had ever heard any of the Hotel California songs. We had to hear them for the first time, transcribe the melody, harmony, and lyrics on to paper, using pen & ink, into a sharp, graphics-quality, camera-ready master that could be reproduced (no computers or digital printers, remember) and was unambiguous, enough to sustain any likely copyright challenges. Can you do that in less that 12 hours?
