Legend lives up to billing
BOB Marley and The Wailers’ compilation set, Legend is among the top 10-selling vinyl albums for 2020, according to Billboard magazine. It is listed at sixth place with 148,000 units sold for the period January 3 to December 31, 2020.
Legend was first released in May 1984 by Island Records. It is a greatest hits collection of singles in its original vinyl format and is the best-selling reggae album of all time, with over 11 million sold in the United States. The album contains all 10 of Bob Marley’s Top-40 hit singles in the United Kingdom up to the time, plus three songs from the original Wailers with Peter Tosh and Bunny Livingston in Stir It Up, I Shot the Sheriff, and Get Up, Stand Up, along with the closing Redemption Song from the album Uprising, .
In 2003 the album was ranked number 46 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, maintaining the rating in a 2012 revised list.
In August 2020 Legend was issued a 13-time platinum certification. The top-selling Marley title of all time, it has sold 3.3 million in the United Kingdom and more than 33 million worldwide.
Marley died in a US hospital in 1981 of cancer. He was 36. Tosh was shot and killed at his St Andrew residence during a home invasion in 1987. He was 42.
English singer Harry Styles tops the list with his 12-track album Fine Lines. Released on 13 December 2019 by Columbia and Erskine Records, the set sold 232,000 units. American singer Billie Eilish occupies the second and eighth slots with When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? (196,000 units) and Don’t Smile at Me (126,000 units), respectively.
Also making the list are Queen, Greatest Hits (176,000) at three and The Beatles’ Abbey Road (161,000) at fourth place. Michael Jackson’s Thriller (125,000) is at ninth while Kendrick Lamar with Good kid, m.A.A.d city. (117,000) occupies 10th position.
According to the article, written by Keith Caulfield, vinyl album sales totalled 27.54 million in 2020, up 46.2 per cent compared to 2019. The year 2020 marked the 15th-consecutive year vinyl album sales grew, and represented the largest year for vinyl album sales since MRC Data began tracking sales in 1991.
