12. Michael Jackson, "Thriller"
It is a well-known fact that this is the biggest-selling album of all time; although the bulk of its sales were in the pre-SoundScan era and thus are a matter of some conjecture, it's reliably thought that this record has sold somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 million copies, making it the best-selling album worldwide and second in the US, behind Eagles' Greatest Hits (ugh). When I was researching this I went down a delightful rabbit hole concerning the history of the best-selling album of all time. The first biggest album ever was the 78 rpm soundtrack to Oklahoma! , which held the title up until 1946. It was briefly interrupted by Al Jolson's The Jolson Story , which I'm sure is an absolute banger, and then regained the crown in 1956. Then it's mostly soundtracks - Boomers fucking loved soundtracks - until 1973, when Carole King's Tapestry became the best-sellling album of all time. For a while it was the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, and then