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