Per Billboard/Wikipedia. Caveats of course for pre-Soundscan and post-streaming. Taylor Swift has most years with the top album (4). Two artists had one album top multiple years (Michael Jackson and Adele). And two artists had the top album of the year despite that album not reaching #1 (Elton John-Goodbye Yellow Brick Road & Janet Jackson-Rhythm Nation 1814). Personal opinion: the most embarrassing year here is 1997. Spice Girls were awful. A close second might be 1989 and Bobby Brown. I'm a little surprised neither Barbra Streisand nor Madonna made this list.

Quite a few impressive takeaways also for me is Elton John having the biggest album, but with a double record and then coming right back and having the biggest seller with a greatest hits. I think we can also tell by decade how sales have declined and more and more streaming has factored in, The Eagles greatest hits technically the biggest selling album ever wasnt the album seller of the year showing the competitions. Another takeaway is the dominance of Taylor Swift, or the lack in competition in terms of selling full albums now whether its physical or digital. I think its safe to say that Taylor is going to have a number one album to end this year with her "Evermore" and that might be the number 2 seller, which considering both had no press and both were surprise issues is telling for her appeal. ALSO the fact of her having the number one album of the year, it was not available physically as a cd or vinyl for at least weeks after it was digitally available and her newest will not be physical till the week after christmas.

MotownSubdivision said:

I disagree rogi... most embarrassing year is definitely 2006. Surprised that Madonna never had BB's top album; I don't think she's ever had top song either whereas Michael (as shown) had the top album in back to back years while Prince had the top song in '84. [Edited 12/19/20 15:57pm]

Yeah, 2006 is up there too.

The 90s would have to be labelled the big selling soundtrack decade with three top selling albums being soundtracks, you can tie this to the fact that some of the big songs from these soundtracks didnt have physical singles, or the ones that did quickly were out of print. The 90's to me were the GREED era of the labels, they actually raised cd prices during this time, most of the time would not release a physical single, whatever label person thought this was wise was dumb especially with Napster around the corner. This led to artists doing these ultra long cd's 80 freaking minutes which is too much, albums to me lost their overall appeal here, though there were some strong albums, I seriously cant sit for 80 minutes with an artists record esoecially in the CD age which led to always skipping tracks, so to me the 90's were the end of strong albums that stand up, regardless of sales, the long ones all needed to be cut in half.