The Beatles’ new stateside chart success

A sample of albums by the Beatles

Looks like the wave or should we say blitz of media celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ first U.S. visit has made an impact on record sales. The Beatles has no fewer than 13 albums in this week’s Billboard Top 200 albums chart, 4 of whom are in the Top 100:

• 1 #20
• Love #62
• Abbey Road #82
• Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band #98
• Rubber Soul (U.S. Albums) #103
• The Beatles #119
• 1967-1970 #137
• On Air: The Beatles Live at the BBC Vol 2 #145
• A Hard Day’s Night Soundtrack (U.S. Albums) #150
• 1962-1966 #154
• Revolver (U.S. Albums) #156
• Meet The Beatles (U.S. Albums) #170
• Hey Jude (U.S. Albums) #186

You’ll also note that only five of these are from the recently released “U.S. Albums” series, and those are all but one in the lower region of the chart.

There are three greatest hits compilations, the jam packed single-disc “1” consisting of all their number one records, either in the UK or the USA or both, and the more thorough “1967-1970” (aka “the blue album”) and “1962-1966” (aka “the red album”).

Last years release of recordings from their BBC performances has gotten a boost, as has their latter day albums, “Abbey Road”, “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and “The Beatles” (aka “the white album”).

Weird to see the 2006 album “Love” – a mashup of Beatles songs mixed together as a soundtrack for the Las Vegas show – so high in the charts, this certainly seems to justify the plans for a repressing of the vinyl
album which we questioned in an earlier post.

But even if it was mentioned as a February release, we haven’t seen any more about it.

Billboard