Well… it’s been a while, hasn’t it?

Back in 2013, I started counting down and reviewing the top 50 best-selling albums in the U.S., in the hopes of getting to the bottom of what exactly makes an album that America loves. Though, as you may have noticed, I haven’t done one of these since March of 2016. Which makes it all a bit fortuitous that my last entry in The People’s Albums referred to then-candidate Trump in its opening paragraph.

Obviously, a lot has changed since the Spring of 2016, and our perception of what exactly America is has also changed. This probably shouldn’t have impacted me talking about mega-selling albums from the past, but for some reason, it did. In each People’s Albums piece, I would declare (in plain terms) why America would go for a certain album. But in the wake of the 2016 election, I wasn’t in the mood at all to write about what America did or didn’t like and why. All I knew was that America sucked, and I didn’t want to think about that fact.

But now, two years later, I’m starting to feel like I have a bit more perspective on why America is the way it is. And why the tectonic shift in our perception of it happened when it did. I also still believe that there are transcendent pieces of pop culture that can unite the two warring Americas, if just for the duration of a pop song or two. Yes, even if you’re a small town girl living in a lonely world, or a city boy born and raised in South Detroit.

(Yes, I realize that was cheesy, but what do you expect? We’re about to talk about Journey for god’s sakes!)

Album: Greatest Hits
Artist: Journey
Release Date: November 15, 1988
Copies Sold In The U.S.: 15 million

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