We often associate the 1960s with the rise of rock ‘n’ roll, psychedelia, and deviation from the norm, but the U.K.’s best-selling album of this decade, behind the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is hardly indicative of any of these more flower-powered stereotypes of the 1960s. Yet, the second-best-selling album in U.K. history was a cultural phenomenon in its own right. Instead of marijuana and peace signs, it had Maria and the Alps.
In the latter half of the 1960s, if people weren’t riding the Fab Four’s bandwagon, they were spinning their records while pretending to spin in a picturesque mountain meadow.
The U.K.’s Best-Selling Albums of the 1960s
By the time the Beatles released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967, they were at the peak of their stardom. The infamous split was approaching, but at a more manageable, less looming pace. The psychedelic concept album sparked the imagination of the global masses as the counterculture movement reached a fever pitch. From its experimental musical offerings to its unique album cover full of notable historical figures, the album is a package representation of the 1960s in more ways than one.
Unsurprisingly, the album skyrocketed to the top of the charts. It held its position at No. 1 on the U.K. Albums Chart for 23 consecutive weeks and on the U.S. Billboard Top LPs chart for 15 weeks. Sgt. Pepper’s impressive sales record garnered it the title of the best-selling album in the U.K. of the 1960s. Coming up just behind the Beatles’ eighth studio album was a record of an entirely different genre and feel: the soundtrack to the 1965 film Sound of Music.
The RCA Victor release was not only the second-best-selling album in the U.K. of the 1960s. It’s one of the most popular soundtracks in musical history, selling over 20 million copies and counting. The soundtrack’s performance isn’t all that surprising, either, given that Sound of Music was the highest-grossing film at the time.
The Beatles and Broadway Were Neck and Neck
If the best-selling albums of the 1960s in the U.K. tell us anything about the musical tastes of the time, it’s that the Beatles and Broadway had near-total domination over chart positions throughout the entire decade. Following behind the Sound of Music soundtrack by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II is the Beatles’ 1963 album, With the Beatles, followed by Abbey Road in 1969. Just behind the Fab Four’s penultimate album at No. 5 is the original soundtrack to South Pacific, another classic musical.
The Beatles make up the entirety of No. 6 through 9 placements, followed by No. 10, the soundtrack to West Side Story. Other genres and artists don’t enter the list until well into the mid-aughts, with Simon & Garfunkel coming up at No. 14 with their 1968 album Bookends.