Jack White’s tricked-out Lazaretto Ultra LP has already been named as the best selling vinyl album of 2014 with its record-breaking first-week sales. But now nearly two months on from its June release, Lazaretto has been crowned the biggest-selling vinyl LP of any year in the last two decades.
According to Billboard, White has now shifted 60,000 vinyl copies of Lazaretto (accounting for 25% of its 238,000 total units), which makes the record the biggest LP success of any year since Pearl Jam released Vitalogy in 1994.
White already smashed the Seattle band’s 20 year old first-week sales record when Lazaretto sold over 40,000 copies in its opening week, compared to Vitalogy‘s 34,000 copies for its November 1994 debut, but how does Lazaretto stack up compared to the best selling vinyl releases of the last 20 years, overall?
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Well first, for comparison’s sake, Lazaretto has more than doubled the second best-selling vinyl release of 2014, Arctic Monkeys’ AM – moving 29,000 copies since September 2013. White has also well surpassed the 49,000 copies of Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories – the highest-selling vinyl release of 2013 – and nearly doubled the top-selling 2012 vinyl LP; his own solo debut Blunderbuss, selling 34k copies.
If White can keep the Lazaretto pace up for the last half of 2014, he could be on track to have one of the biggest selling vinyl releases in the US since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking music sales in 1991.
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According to Yahoo! Music, Jack White is hot on the heels on the overall vinyl sales of Michael Jackson’s Thriller (73k) and U2’s Achtung Baby (76k) and is more likely to reach the figures of more recent record releases, such as Mumford & Sons’ Sigh No More (93k) and Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago (95k). Pearl Jam’s Vitalogy has also shifted 93k copies since it was released in 1994.
But most surprisingly, the biggest selling vinyl release in Neilsen SoundScan history, dwarfing Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon (105k) and The Beatles’ Abbey Road (212k) is none other than Disney’s The Lion King soundtrack , which has sold a staggering 1,043,000 vinyl copies.
Yep, over a million slabs of wax of Elton John and cartoon animals singing have been sold in the US to date, making it the biggest selling vinyl release of the modern era.
For interest’s sake, The Lion King didn’t have quite the same success with vinyl buyers over in the UK, according to the Official Charts Company’s list of the 20 best selling vinyl records of the last 20 years (via NME). The list (which unfortunately doesn’t include sales figures) is populated with plenty of Britain’s biggest names such as Blur, Radiohead, The Beatles, and Oasis, who have three entries on the list (which you can view in full below).
Lazaretto‘s success is another reminder that serves to show that the vinyl boom is now bigger than ever, with US vinyl sales reaching 6.1 million units in 2014, 40% boost from this time last year, they still account for just a fraction of overall album sales.
Need proof? The year’s biggest selling album in the US is the Frozen soundtrack (another Disney album!), which has sold a whopping 2.8 million copies across all formats, nearly four times that of the year’s second biggest selling album: Beyoncé and its 702,000 copies.
Best-Selling Vinyl Albums Of Nielsen SoundScan Era
via Yahoo! Music
- The Lion King Soundtrack – 1,043,000 copies
- The Beatles – Abbey Road – 212,000
- Pink Floyd – Dark Side of the Moon – 105,000
- Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago – 95,000
- Mumford & Sons – Sigh No More – 93,000
- Pearl Jam – Vitalogy – 93,000
- U2 – Achtung Baby – 76,000
- Michael Jackson – Thriller – 73,000
- Jack White – Lazaretto – 60,000
UK’s 20 Best-Selling Vinyl Albums Of The Last 20 Years
Accoring to Official Charts Company, via NME
1. Oasis – What’s the Story, Morning Glory? (1995)
2. Oasis – Definitely Maybe (1994)
3. Portishead – Dummy (1994)
4. Travis – The Invisible Band (2001)
5. Radiohead – The King of Limbs (2011)
6. Leftfield – Leftism (1994)
7. The Beatles – Live at the BBC (1994)
8. Massive Attack vs. Mad Professor – Protection/No Protection (1995)
9. Queen – Made in Heaven (1995)
10. The Prodigy – Fat Of The Land (1997)
11. Paul Weller – Stanley Road (1995)
12. The Stone Roses – Second Coming (1994)
13. Blur – Parklife (1994)
14. Nirvana – MTV Unplugged In New York (1994)
15. The Prodigy – Music For The Jilted Generation (1994)
16. Neil Young – Harvest (1972)
17. Pulp – Different Class (1995)
18. Oasis – Be Here Now (1997)
19. DJ Shadow – Endtroducing (1999)
20. The Beatles – Anthology 1 (1995)
