What is the best-selling Rolling Stones album?

There has been an ongoing debate about whether The Rolling Stones have made the same legacy as The Beatles. For all of the great music that both artists gave us throughout their time together, they will always be placed next to each other as bitter rivals, despite both bands saying that they got on fine with each other. The Fab Four may have written immaculate tunes, but what’s the one album that took The Rolling Stones into the stratosphere?

When talking about The Stones, though, it also comes down to the volume of material. Since many legacy bands get swallowed up by having millions of rare collections and box sets come out devoted to their work, it’s a bit tougher trying to parse through the band’s catalogue since they are still recording to this day.

There’s also the problem of looking at the different eras that the band have gone through. While The Stones may have relied on the momentum of their previous hits to get them through the back half of the 20th century, some of their biggest successes came when putting together different best-ofs, paving the way for new generations of fans to see what Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had to offer for the first time.

Despite all of the sales figures and records broken by The Stones throughout their history, none of it takes away from the massive impact on the rock world at large, with many fans still following their model to this day. When talking about the best that the band have to offer, the masses have agreed that it all comes back to the collections.

What is the best-selling Rolling Stones album?
Bands normally spend an age trying to get just the right tracklisting for an album. Even though it might take an eternity to try and get albums recorded, it’s equally costly to get everyone to decide which songs make it and which songs get left on the cutting room floor. While every song should be able to speak to each other in just the right way, The Stones managed to get their best-selling album by shoving the best of their 1960s work into the album Hot Rocks (1964-1971).

While this collection of Stones hits cuts the band off before the brilliance of albums like Exile on Main St and Goats Head Soup, this is a look at the band as 1960s hitmakers, putting their celebrated tracks like ‘Satisfaction’ alongside their more adult material like ‘Wild Horses’. Although the band may have sold plenty of studio albums in their time, Hot Rocks stands just above the band’s 1979 album Some Girls as their best-selling work at 6.917 million copies sold.

Did The Rolling Stones sell more than The Beatles?
The conversation between The Beatles and The Stones is never going to blow over. As much as the Fab Four kicked down the door for rock and roll, The Stones were the true spokesmen of blues-soaked British rock that would dominate the cultural conversation for years. While The Beatles may have won the war of cultural relevance, The Stones won more than their fair share of battles with Hot Rocks.

Standing at nearly seven million copies sold, The Stones’ beloved best-of compilation ended up selling far more copies than most of The Beatles’ core studio albums, towering over many of their Liverpool buddies’ early material like A Hard Day’s Night and Please Please Me, each of them selling around three million and one million copies respectively. Though The Beatles’ later period brought with them new creative innovations no one had heard before, The Stones could go toe-to-toe with their mop-top phase any day of the week.

How many number-one albums did The Rolling Stones have?
For most artists, it’s all about getting the number-one spot on the charts. Even though many of the greatest artists in the world tend to bypass the charts half the time, nothing is better for their relevance than to say that they are one of the best-selling acts in the country. After years of being one of the most prominent rock acts in the world, The Stones eventually managed to notch up 12 number-one albums in their time together.

Starting with their self-titled album topping the charts in the UK in 1964, the band have continued to notch up one classic album after another on top of the hit parade. Compared to the usual rock stars that have one celebrated album, The Stones have had a steady record of making amazing albums that rocket up the charts, with their most recent album, Hackney Diamonds, reaching the top spot as well. The funniest part? Hot Rocks only stalled out at number three upon release.

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