Society,  Web

Best selling artists

I recently stumbled upon this list of top selling artists of all time. While it was pretty much what I expected there were some notable surprises, most notably, Leonard Cohen is in the top 20! He’s ahead of Mettalica, AC/DC, Bon Jovi, Barbra Streisand and Bruce Springsteen.

I then go to the Leonard Cohen page on Wikipedia, and see this quote:

“I feel that, you know, the enormous luck I’ve had in being able to make a living, and to never have had to have written one word that I didn’t want to write, to be able to have satisfied that dictum I set for myself, which was not to work for pay, but to be paid for my work. Just to be able to satisfy those standards that I set for myself has been an enormous privilege.”

which is as good a theory of working I’ve seen in quite some time.

Now readers, whose presence surprised you the most on the list of best selling artists? Comments are open.

One Comment

  • Anonymous

    I’m with the anti-wikipedia alliance on most things. However, to answer your question, I thought Englebert Swiddletydink would have been a little further down. I’m not sure who the J-pop guy is at the top, but he must have been the master of the 4-Song EP. Granted, in Japan that probably costs $40 a pop, so more power to him and his audience. My guess is this list has a standard deviation of about 50%.

    -Nick