QUEEN‘s 1981 “Greatest Hits” collection, which was recently re-released for its 40th anniversary, could return to the No. 1 position on the U.K.’s Official Albums Chart for the first time in four decades.
“Greatest Hits” currently has a sales advantage of more than 3,500 copies over its closest competitor. More than 80% of its sales total comes from physical retail.
First released in 1981, “Greatest Hits” stands alone as the first and only album to have sold over six million copies in the U.K. (6.75 million sales to date), with global sales in excess of 25 million. Added to that, in the U.K., the collection has now spent over 900 weeks on the album chart and has been certified a staggering 22 times platinum.
According to the Official Charts Company, which crowned “Greatest Hits” “Britain’s most popular album of the past 60 years,” one in four British households already own a copy of the LP.
At the time of its original release, “Greatest Hits” spent four weeks at the top of the U.K. chart.
The new collector’s-edition “Greatest Hits” CD with exclusive slipcase cover and a limited-edition cassette format were released globally July 2. In addition, the official QUEEN online store exclusively offered the collector’s edition “Greatest Hits” CD and four highly limited band member color cassettes. This version of the slipcase CD encases a CD-sized print personally signed by band members Brian May and Roger Taylor (limited to 1000 copies only).
Last November, QUEEN‘s “Greatest Hits” hit the Top 10 of the Billboard 200 for the first time since its release in 1981 and after a jaw-dropping 412 weeks on the chart. Its previous peak was No. 11, which it hit in 1992. The nine-times-platinum-selling career-spanning collection also hit No. 1 on Billboard‘s Vinyl Albums chart with the second-largest sales week of 2020 for any vinyl release.
Spanning QUEEN‘s triumphant first act, “Greatest Hits” includes some of the world’s most iconic rock songs, including the stadium-sized symphonic chart-topper “Bohemian Rhapsody”, the most-streamed song of the 20th century around the globe and the most-streamed classic rock song of all time. Other gems featured on this compendium include the roof-raising “We Are The Champions”, the crowd-rousing “We Will Rock You”, the tongue-in-cheek “Fat Bottomed Girls”, the stomp-stomp-stomp late-’70s-disco-inspired “Another One Bites The Dust”, to the finger-snapping jukebox retro-rock homage “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” and the soaring, impassioned, gospel-tinged “Somebody To Love”.
Last year, QUEEN teamed with Target and Walmart for two separate “Greatest Hits” vinyl exclusives, both being two-disc LPs, 180-gram, with fans having a choice between ruby blend marble vinyl or red and white-colored vinyl.
In an era dominated by hip-hop and pop, QUEEN is bigger than ever with a timeless appeal and a new generation of fans. Their recently released live album, QUEEN + ADAM LAMBERT “Live Around The World”, shot to No. 1 on the U.K.’s Official albums chart, their first time topping that chart since 1995’s “Made In Heaven”.
