As shocking as it may seem, some of the greatest and most influential popular music acts in history never scored a Number One single on Billboard‘s Hot 100 chart, but nonetheless recorded albums that appealed to the collective consciousness of the public in such a manner that their sales pushed them to the top of the Billboard album chart. Artists in this elite group include Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Bob Dylan, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Led Zeppelin, and more recent stars such as Garth Brooks, Bruce Springsteen, R.E.M., Nirvana, and Pearl Jam.
This website tells the stories behind the albums that have topped the album chart during the rock era. As you will see, the list of artists and titles is incredibly diverse, ranging from the Singing Nun, Bob Newhart, and The Sound of Music to Snoop Dogg, Garth Brooks, Nirvana, and The Lion King. For purposes of this website, the coverage starts on May 5, 1956, with Elvis Presley, the first rock ‘n’ roll album to top the album chart (rather than July 9, 1955, when Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock” became the first rock ‘n’ roll single to top the Hot 100). The book this website is based on runs through the end of 1995, when, oddly enough, the Beatles returned to score their 16th chart-topper.
Some have said that the single is the ultimate form of artistic expression in popular music. True, there’s nothing like a great single for its immediacy and brevity, but even some marginal artists have somehow managed to record three minutes of magic.
I’d argue that an album is a greater barometer of artistic worth, as an album can contain several singles and gives an artist the opportunity to stretch out and record material that may not be commercially viable enough for release as a single, but further illustrates the artist’s vision.
On the Billboard charts, topping the Hot 100 is one of the pinnacles of success most acts dream of, yet having an album top the album chart is even a great accomplishment, for an album represents months or even years of work.
While the Hot 100 rankings are computed for a combination of radio airplay and sales, the album chart is based solely on sales, so the albums that top The Billboard 200 are the true favorites of the public, not of a select group of radio programmers. Although an occasional album will reach Number One on the strength of a chart-topping single, usually it is the combination of several hit and/or an act’s hard-earned reputation that push an album to the top. Therefore, the album chart has been more immune to “one-hit wonders” than the Hot 100.
This website doesn’t offer a critical perspective or a review of the titles that have topped the Billboard album chart. However, those who feel an artist’s work alone is more important than commercial success will be happy to find that many of the greatest and most influential albums ever made — from Elvis Presley, the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and the Rolling Stones’s Exile on Main St. to Michael Jackson’s Thriller, R.E.M.’s Out of Time, Nirvana’s Nevermind — have gone to Number One.
This website follows a format established with Fred Bronson’s Billboard Book of Number One Hits. With few exceptions, each entry contains quotes from among the hundreds of interviews I conducted with artists, producers, engineers, session players, and record executives. The point of this website is to play tribute to the albums and the artists who have topped the Billboard album chart. The ultimate tribute, however, would be if readers of this website went and sought out an old chart-topper to experience a Number One album for the first time, or delved into their own personal collections to reacquaint themselves with an old favorite. After all, this website is only made up of words, and ultimately it’s the music that matters.
Some practical concerns: Billboard introduced one of its most important features, a top 5 pop albums chart, in 1945. Since then, the chart has been through several name changes and incarnations. One significant change worth noting is the advent of the separate stereo and mono charts from May 25, 1959 through August 17, 1963. During that period, I’ve opted to include all the Number One albums, whether they topped the mono chart, stereo chart, or both. The entry for each album topping an album chart during this period lists the total weeks at Number One (if different from its stay at the stereo or mono chart) and the weeks it spent at Number One on the stereo and/or mono charts.
Also please note that all chart-related dates in this book, in keeping with the long-established Billboard style, refer to the week ending on the date shown.
The label notations and stock numbers that appear at the beginning of each entry refer to the record labels and the catalog numbers that appeared on the version of the album that went to Number One. Scores of albums in this book have been reissued on CD, often with a different catalog number, and occasionally on a different label; some of the others, sadly, are out-of-print as of this writing.
While Billboard‘s charts have long been regarded as the most reputable source in the business, that’s not to say they couldn’t be even more accurate. The biggest breakthrough in this area came in 1991, when Billboard pacted with SoundScan, a firm that collects point-of-sale data from scanning machines that read an album’s bar code. Billboard began using SoundScan data on May 25, 1991. As a result, a broader range of titles appeared on the album chart. Another effect of SoundScan was that albums began to debut at Number One more frequently. In fact, in the SoundScan era more albums debut at Number One than actually climb to Number One is subsequent weeks.
Thanks to SoundScan technology, The Billboard 200 is more exciting and accurate than ever. Every week millions of pop music lovers — whether they are record company executives, retail store clerks, or just dedicated fans ?wait anxiously to hear the news about who is on top of the album chart. One a week-to-week basis, those die-hards will have to keep checking out Billboard, but for those who want to know about the past, they’ll find it here on this website.
Craig Rosen
March 1996
(Revised slightly for the web, May 2008)