Michael Jackson left us at age of 50 today, but his music will stay with us on and on. Although there are many ways of measuring the success of a musician, but Michael Jackson definitely holds the top spot of producing best selling albums. He has produced 3 albums that sold more than 30 million copies worldwide each, among which his 1982 album Thriller is the top seller in the all-time best selling albums, sold more than 109 million copies worldwide.
Here are his all-time selling albums:
Thriller: $12.99
The Biggest Album Ever just got bigger. The 25th Anniversary Edition of Thriller celebrates this ground-breaking album with 7 bonus tracks, six of which are previously unreleased. The new tracks include exclusive remixes from Kanye West, Fergie, will.i.am and Akon along with a previously unreleased track from the Thriller sessions, “For All Time,” newly mixed and mastered by Michael Jackson. Also included is a BONUS DVD with new, digitally restored versions of the three videos from the album as well as the Michael Jackson’s groundbreaking performance of “Billie Jean” on the “Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever” television special (first broadcast on NBC May 16, 1983).
Bad: $5.93
Though it sold in the eight-figure range worldwide, to some ears Bad suffered in comparison to its predecessor, Thriller. While not as visionary as that record-breaker and Off the Wall, the 1987 album does find Jackson and producer Quincy Jones continuing to work their craft at a high level. As it had with Thriller, radio embraced nearly every cut. Airplay saturation helped make the likes of “The Way You Make Me Feel,” “Smooth Criminal,” and the title track major hits in their day; they ring with confidence and good feeling more than a decade later. The self-involvement that would make the new material on History (1995) sound so curdled had yet to overtake Jackson; even his plea to “Leave Me Alone” displayed a sure wit, particularly in its video version. While the third best of his first three Epic solo discs, Bad carries a lot of what people love about Michael Jackson’s music. –Rickey Wright
Dangerous: $7.97
Michael Jackson was still going for pop hits with 1991′s Dangerous, but he also front-loaded the album with six straight Teddy Riley-assisted cuts. This half-hour swoop of tense, aggressive, often angular funk was Jackson’s most interesting music since Thriller, and still sounds, well, invincible on this remastered edition. After that, the record’s uneven, but there’s nothing embarrassing about it, either. “Gone Too Soon,” a non-Jackson composition about teen AIDS casualty Ryan White, is a quiet statement (particularly played next to the choir-laden “Heal the World,” “Keep the Faith,” and “Will You Be There”) showing that the star doesn’t always have to get showy. The sprightly “Black or White” is explicitly pro-interracial romance, an angle its video didn’t go near, and the urgent “Give In to Me” is almost scary. Scary good, that is. –Rickey Wright
