All-time best-selling albums by women worldwide 2022 The top-selling female-fronted album of all time based on certified unit sales worldwide is currently Whitney Houston's 1992-released 'The Bodyguard Soundtrack,' with a massive 45 million copies sold.
Michael Jackson's Thriller, estimated to have sold 70 million copies worldwide, is the best-selling album ever. Jackson also currently has the highest number of albums on the list with five, Celine Dion has four, while the Beatles, Pink Floyd, Madonna and Whitney Houston each have three.
Shania Twain
Today, she has sold over 100 million records, making her the best-selling female country artist of all time.
Whitney Houston 'I Will Always Love You'
This single spent 14 weeks at number one making it one of the best-selling singles of all time. It also holds the record for being the best-selling single by a woman in music history.
1 singles by a female artist. Mariah Carey (USA) has topped the US Billboard Hot 100 singles chart on 19 different occasions.
Madonna currently holds the record for the most number-one songs in the 43-year history of the chart, with 50. The only other artists to have achieved more than 20 chart toppers are Rihanna (33) and Beyonce (22).
Top-selling artists worldwide as of 2022
Perhaps unsurprisingly, British rock band The Beatles are top of the list for best-selling artists worldwide, with 183 million units certified sales. Second is Garth Brooks with over 157 million units sales, followed by Elvis Presley with 139 million units.
Multi-Platinum Goes Mainstream
Barbra Streisand has more Gold albums than any other female artist. She has 52 separate Gold (or higher) albums!
(1942–98), U.S. country-music singer. Early in her recording career, Tammy Wynette was dubbed The First Lady of Country Music when she became the first female country act to have a million-selling album.
Taylor Swift is the highest-paid female entertainer in the world, earning a cool $92 million in 2022 following the success of her 10th studio album “Midnights,” according to a new report from Forbes.
1: Aretha Franklin
Topping our list of the best female singers of all time, Aretha Franklin also stands as the most-charting female singer in history. Starting out in the gospel choir at her Baptist church, in Detroit, Franklin began her career as a recording artist in 1960, aged just 18.
Talk about a dream come true. For 23 years, no artist had matched Michael Jackson's record of five No. 1s from a single album (Bad).
The first CD to sell a million copies world-wide was Dire Straits' Brother in Arms in 1986. It subsequently topped a million sales in Europe alone, including over 250,000 in Britain.
The Beatles have the most No. 1 hits of all time: 20.
Garth Brooks is the artist with the most diamond albums.
The late singer's 1985 debut Whitney Houston and her sophomore 1987 Whitney album are also Diamond, making her the only female artist to have three albums of that status. Only two other women in music history can say they have a Diamond-certified single and album: Taylor Swift and Mariah Carey.
With 40 top 10 hits in the Hot 100 over her career, Swift surpassed Madonna as the woman with the most top 10s in the chart's history. (Madonna has 38 top 10 singles.) Swift is only surpassed by Drake, who counts 59 top 10 hits.
2 on Billboard's Holiday Albums Chart. The album sold 239,000 copies in its first week. The EP was certified platinum by the RIAA, making Evancho the youngest solo artist ever to go platinum in the US. Evancho promoted the album with TV interviews and performances beginning with The Oprah Winfrey Show in October 2010.
Over the course of Elvis' life, he achieved some of the highest accolades in music and film. It is estimated that more than one billion Elvis records have been sold worldwide, more than anyone in record industry history.
As of June 2023, "Blinding Lights" (2019) by Canadian singer the Weeknd is the most-streamed song of all time on Spotify, while "Dance Monkey" (2019) by Australian singer-songwriter Tones and I is the most-streamed song by a female artist.
Gerhard Richter is at the very top of our list—the most famous living painter today. Born in 1932 in Dresden, Germany, Richter currently lives and works in Cologne, Germany.
Frankie Laine – I Believe (18 weeks)
Famous composer Mantovani then claimed the Number 1 spot, before Frankie gave him a nudge and racked up an additional three weeks. Only five songs in history have scored three separate stints at the top!
It broke three UK chart records in the process. With 44 years since her last number one, "Wuthering Heights" in 1978, Bush surpassed Tom Jones's 42-year gap between number ones and replaced Cher as the oldest female solo chart-topping artist at 63 years and 11 months.
Paul McCartney (32) and John Lennon (26), of The Beatles, rank first and second, respectively, for having written the most Hot 100 No. 1s, thanks to their respective group and solo outputs.