Why are certain things popular?

I have no idea.  In fact, I’m pretty sure no one really knows.  In regards to albums, sometimes it’s a couple of hit singles, maybe a zeitgeist-capturing sound that people can’t get enough of, or maybe, just maybe an album gets popular because the songs on it are actually really good.  These are the types of things I want to delve into in a recurring feature in which I count down the 50 best-selling albums in the U.S. of all-time, which I have dubbed “The People’s Albums”.  I’ll go about this by simply listening to them, then trying to get to the bottom of why each particular album appealed to such a massive audience.

The kinds of albums I’ll be reviewing here will most likely fall in to two distinct categories: insanely popular albums that people continue to adore, and insanely popular albums that are now just relics of a bygone era, an era when people actually bought music.  This will almost certainly make for a group of albums that I’ve either listened to about a million times, or albums whose appeal is a bit harder to discern (i.e. probably suck) and thus have not made me feel compelled to seek them out until now.  Number 50 on the best-selling albums list easily falls in to the latter category, since this is not something I can ever imagine listening to on purpose.  But that’s ok, since I reckon that’s what this whole experiment is all about.

Album: The Woman In Me
Artist: Shania Twain
Release Date: February 7, 1995
Copies Sold In The U.S.: 12 Million Continue reading →