| |
Celeb News: Billboard ranks favorite Diamond certified albums
Member Since: 12/25/2003
Posts: 13,870
|
Billboard ranks favorite Diamond certified albums
From Billboard, only listing ATRL pop girl faves:
Quote:
It's worth celebrating whenever we get a brand new, RIAA-certified diamond-selling album -- indicating sales (and streaming equivalent sales) of ten million units -- because for a while, it looked like we might never get another one again. For a half-decade after Usher's Confessions was released in 2004, no album of new material was released that even got particularly close to diamond status, largely the result of a download-reeling music industry adjusting slowly to the decline of physical media.
Then, Adele. In 2011, the singer/songwriter's four-quadrant-appealing 21 was released, sparking sales unseen since the beginning of the millennium. The album stayed on top the Billboard 200 for 24 weeks, and was given the Diamond certification in November of 2012, eventually going 14x platinum. For her next act, Ms. Adkins demolished *NSYNC's record for first-week sales with her follow-up effort, 25, moving an incomprehensible 3.38 million in its debut frame, according to Nielsen SoundScan. And last week (Sept. 22), Adele was awarded her second consecutive diamond plaque, for 25 -- less than a year after the album's release.
To honor the exclusive club that Adele joins with her latest sales achievement, we've ranked every one of the RIAA-certified diamond albums. That's not counting compilations -- including greatest-hits collections, live albums, and certain soundtracks -- unless the set is comprised mainly of contemporary material. (The Dirty Dancing soundtrack, for instance, includes seven contemporary songs and five old ones, so it's in, but Garth Brooks' The Ultimate Hits -- itself certified diamond earlier this week -- has only four new songs in 34 tracks, so it's out.) It's still a whopping 88 albums, though, ranging nearly 60 years back to Elvis Presley's Elvis' Christmas Album.
Read our list here, and let's hope we don't have to wait for another Adele album -- whenever that comes -- to welcome our next newcomer to these ranks. (Each album's year of release and most-recent platinum certification as of Sept. 2016 is included.)
83. Celine Dion, Let’s Talk About Love (1997, 10x Platinum)
An expert collection of Adult Contemporary super-competence, its 65-degree placidness is broken only by the mega-ballad you already knew from Titanic and the song where Celine tries her hand at dancehall for some reason. Carl Wilson wrote a great book about it; that and the Bee Gees and Babs duets may be all you really need to take away from this one.
81. Britney Spears. …Baby One More Time (1999, 14x Platinum)
Britney’s chips-half-in debut effort has aged about as well as an album with a Sonny & Cher cover, special guest appearances from Mikey Bassie and Don Phillip, and a climactic slow song called “E-Mail My Heart” could be expected to. But “Crazy” still goes – if not as hard as in its Melissa Joan Hart-approved remix – and we’ll know the aliens come in peace if they make first contact via the title track’s three-note piano hook.
75. Celine Dion, Falling Into You (1996, 11x Platinum)
Gets soggy in the latter half, and covers of “(You Make Me Feel Like) a Natural Woman” and “River Deep, Mountain High” can’t help coming off a little stilted. Her “All By Myself” redo fares far better, though, “Seduces Me” is as sensual as it should be, and “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” reaches heights of Jim Steinman-conducted melodrama that even Meat Loaf would only scale with extreme trepidation.
71. Jewel, Pieces of You (1997, 12x Platinum)
Closer to Tori Amos territory than you might remember, as excoriating missives like “Daddy” and the title track (which repeats the word “f----t” until it can see you physically squirming) are just as vicious and bruised -- albeit a tad more clumsy -- as anything on Little Earthquakes. What really hurts here are the love songs, though: Breakup lament “You Were Meant for Me” easily justifies its tear-choked vocals, and “Morning Song” makes leaving bed in the a.m. an act of true betrayal.
70. Shania Twain, Up! (2002, 11x Platinum)
Sort of a cheap diamond, since Shania notched double-album sales for a multi-disc set that was really the same album twice, just in “Red” (pop), “Green” (country) and occasionally “Blue” (world/dance) editions. Up! failed to produce the monster U.S. hits that Come On Over tossed off like complimentary mints, and the incongruous self-righteousness of “Ka-Ching!” and “What a Way to Be!” are a strange look for Shania, but weaponized country-pop blasts like “I’m Gonna Getcha Good!” and “Nah!” are exuberant enough to earn their Elaine Benes-like exclamation mark usage.
66. Mariah Carey, Daydream (1995, 10x Platinum)
The “Open Arms” cover is a pretty good call, “Always Be My Baby” is forever (way moreso than “Forever”) and Boyz II Men duet “One Sweet Day” is the ‘90s pop equivalent of Jimmy Page and Eddie Van Halen swapping guitar solos. But Daydream commits the cardinal sin of following “Fantasy” with 11 songs that are not “Fantasy,” and that we cannot forgive -- not even Kanye would try to get away with that ****.
62. Britney Spears, Oops!... I Did It Again (2000, 10x Platinum)
Packs the edge Spears’ debut sorely lacked: the title track establishes that not-that-innocent Britney would be taking over from here, “Don’t Let Me Be the Last to Know” proved her capable of post-puppy-love balladry (rightly enduring as a fan and artist favorite), and even the Stones cover is impressively nervy. Doesn’t last the whole way, unfortunately: Once Lucky accepts her Academy Award, feel free to FF through the rest.
56. Mariah Carey, Music Box (1993, 10x Platinum)
Like most ‘90s Mariah albums, there’s one narcotic pop single and one world-beating power ballad – though in the case of Music Box, “Hero” was cast in the latter role when it actually should’ve gone to “Anytime You Need a Friend.” The deep cuts here are better than on Daydream, with a couple C+C-produced bangers: “Now That I Know,” a skronking jam that should’ve been a club-killer and “I’ve Been Thinking About You,” a frisky dance-pop wink that one-ups Londonbeat.
52. Adele, 25 (2015, 10x Platinum)
25 managed to put up Wilt Chamberlain numbers in a depressed sales era mostly by giving the people what they wanted: Big ballads based around Adele’s generational pipes and down-to-earth glamour. “Hello” is as successful a comeback single as pop has managed this decade, and Max Martin collab “Send My Love (To Your New Lover)” offered hope of a more spritely direction for her grand drama, though 25 leaves it as something of a tease, instead submerging in a stately sorrow until the show-stopping climax of “All I Ask.”
44. Shania Twain, The Woman In Me (1994, 12x Platinum)
Impressive that Come On Over essentially reduced this to album-before-the-album status, considering how massive this was: Four country number-ones, including her first Top 40 hit crossover, the stadium-rocking reverse-double-standard anthem “Any Man of Mine.” Smart, seductive, and impressively worldly – the title track’s video was even shot in Egypt -- the whole thing sounds like a million bucks; if only its younger sibling hadn’t sounded like half a billion.
39. Whitney Houston, Whitney Houston (1985, 13x Platinum)
Whitney crashed the back half of the ‘80s with a limitless voice and limitless pop potential -- both on full display in the ace ballads of the diva’s self-titled debut, including the least-conflicted Other Woman song ever (“Saving All My love for You”) and the indefatigable show-stopper that turns us all into raving Patrick Batemans (“The Greatest Love of All”). You might wish for more upbeat songs than the couple here, but when one of those is “How Will I Know,” it’s hard to get too mad.
36. Alanis Morissette, Jagged Little Pill (1995, 16x Platinum)
Jagged Little Pill may be the most undeniably human album to ever sell eight digits; a pigeonhole-proof statement from an artist who broke out with the bloodiest post-breakup anthem ever inspired by a Full House alum, and who turned her schizophrenic creativity into one of the cuddliest videos of the decade. Not all of it is necessarily fun to listen to in 2016, but it’s always admirable for the sheer fact that we’ll never experience anything quite like it ever again.
16. Shania Twain, Come On Over (1997, 20x Platinum)
The country-pop crossover album that even made Garth sound like Steve Earle with its Mutt Lange-blessed largesse. Come On Over moves with the confidence of an album strong enough across its 16 cuts that it can save its two best singles for tracks 10 and 13 without it being that weird -- even if that still doesn’t stop the first ten seconds of “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” from going off like a goddamn atom bomb.
13. Adele, 21 (2011, 14x Platinum)
Proving a 2001-style blockbuster was still possible in 2011, it’s a tribute to Adele’s peerless abilities as a singer-songwriter that overplay couldn’t dull the viciousness of “Rolling in the Deep,” the humiliation of “Someone Like You,” even the cheekiness of “Rumour Has It.” Even more importantly, deeper 21 cuts like “He Won’t Go,” “One and Only” and “Turning Tables” are just as devastating left-hooks, and even the water-logged Cure cover feels like a necessary tribute to the tears-on-my-pillow history of pop’s past.
9. Madonna, Like a Virgin (1984, 10x Platinum)
Madonna’s musical and conceptual ambitions would grow from here, but the pure thrills of Like a Virgin are not to be overshadowed: “Angel” and “Dress You Up” are perfectly synth-popped chewing gum, “Material Girl” does Marilyn and Motown proud, and the title track is rivaled only by “Billie Jean” as the defining jam of MTV’s formative years. A year later she’d give away a couple brilliant singles away to soundtracks, seemingly just because she could.
7. TLC, CrazySexyCool (1995, 11x Platinum)
So cold chillin’ that Busta Rhymes, Phife Dawg and Andre 3000 all stop by just to hang, CrazySexyCool successfully rebranded the condom-wearing candy kids of “What About Your Friends” as grown-ass women, capable of making cheating seductive, raising AIDS awareness, and flipping genders back on Prince. With a ‘90s Atlanta Braves-caliber squad of producers giving up the funk, TLC created the gold standard for ‘90s R&B... maybe for post-hip-hop R&B, period.
And the #1:
1. Prince, Purple Rain (1984, 13x Platinum)
A soundtrack that actually makes for a more coherent cinematic experience than the film it accompanies, Purple Rain is certainly in contention for the most perfect album in rock or pop history, expertly flowing from track to track while delighting, surprising and astounding at each bend. Personal and universal, familiar and challenging, romantic and narcissistic, religious and orgasmic, accessible to all and profoundly weird, Purple Rain rightly remains the cornerstone of Prince’s recorded legacy, almost too obvious in its brilliance to even be worth discussing at length.
|
http://www.billboard.com/articles/ne...source=twitter
Like A Virgin & CrazySexyCool so high 
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 8/6/2015
Posts: 18,803
|
I'm surprised 88 albums have been certified diamond tbh
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 8/19/2013
Posts: 2,313
|
Only ever listened to 21 and 25 on that list.
Im useless
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 8/7/2015
Posts: 8,139
|
Quote:
Originally posted by Dylobs
I'm surprised 88 albums have been certified diamond tbh
|
Excluding greatest hits and compilations
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 8/6/2015
Posts: 5,608
|
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 5/9/2012
Posts: 38,050
|
Jewel, Shania, and Mariah! Talent! 
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 8/7/2015
Posts: 5,883
|
omg 
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 9/9/2012
Posts: 59,872
|
Quote:
74. OutKast, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below (2003, 11x Platinum)
A diamond-selling double-album that won both the Album of the Year Grammy and the Pazz & Jop critics poll, and boasts one of the most popular songs of all-time… but does anyone actually still listen to it? OutKast empirically proved they were more than the sum of their parts by segregating the contributions of Big Boi and Andre 3000 to their own discs, and while the results were rapturously received at the time, S/TLB’s rep sags farther every year since, as fans realize how critical the balance and interplay the duo provided one another was to their overall alchemy.
|
WHAT THE HELL 
Billboard sister, stick to charts.
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 5/27/2016
Posts: 2,591
|
surprised thriller wasn't number 1 and where is TWOTW? it's eligible for diamond and couple of albums on that list were definitely re certified. 
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 4/27/2012
Posts: 9,977
|
Madonna's acclaim 
They should have included Immaculate Collection a.k.a. the Pop Bible.
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 8/19/2013
Posts: 34,855
|
Quote:
Originally posted by iHype.
WHAT THE HELL
Billboard sister, stick to charts.
|
ff this is a disgrace
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 5/27/2016
Posts: 2,591
|
not them ranking music box over day dream 
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 5/19/2012
Posts: 5,925
|
Whitney and TLC
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 1/6/2014
Posts: 2,937
|
First off, Speakerboxxx should be top 3, and where is Saturday Night Fever?
They got the #1 correct, however. Where did Songs In The Key of Life land? That should be top 3 min.
Where's Ready To Die?
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 12/14/2011
Posts: 21,274
|
Quote:
Originally posted by iHype.
WHAT THE HELL
Billboard sister, stick to charts.
|
They better drag!
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 4/27/2012
Posts: 9,977
|
Will this count for acclaimedmusic.com?
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 4/27/2012
Posts: 9,977
|
Quote:
Originally posted by Wicked
where is Saturday Night Fever?
|
6. Various Artists, Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack (1977, 15x Platinum)
___
Replaces: MJ with Pink Floyd, TLC with AC/DC, Eminem with Stevie.
Led Zeppelin #1
And great top 10
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 6/7/2005
Posts: 20,766
|
I see all my faves there.
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 1/20/2012
Posts: 27,830
|
I can't believe Michael only has one diamond album
I thought for sure Bad was diamond and possibly Off the Wall / Dangerous were too
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 8/7/2015
Posts: 2,457
|
They really need to just stick to what they know which is charts.
MJ and Prince both being in the top 5 is one of the only right things I see about this list.
|
|
|
|
|
|
