Top 10 Albums 1955-2011

For the past 57 years, Billboard magazine has featured a weekly chart that ranks the best-selling albums in America. This chart has grown from 15 to 200 positions and is presently known as “The Billboard 200.” Based solely on consumer choice, it has long been the most musically diverse chart of all. An album’s greatest chart achievement is to hit within the upper reaches, the Top 10. This book is a thorough and concise history of every Top 10 album with its chart stats and its tracks — that’s every Top 10 album that debuted on Billboard’s albums charts from January 1, 1955 through September 24, 2011! Bonus sections include the Albums Annual listing of each year’s top albums and the Top 50 artists ranking with pictures. Inside you’ll find a wide variety from Johnny Mathis to Dave Matthews, Queen to Kings Of Leon, and Alabama to Oklahoma, plus the answers to the following fun facts:

• Who had the most Top 10 albums?
• The #1 album of 2009 belongs to Carrie, Colbie, Miley, Susan or Reba?
• Who is the only artist to have the #1 album for three years in a row?
• Which rock band had more Top 10 albums: The Rolling Stones or The Beatles?
• Name the 1958 Broadway musical that has the song “76 Trombones,” “Gary, Indiana” and “Till There Was You.”
• Which male vocalist had more Top 10 albums: Elvis Presley or The Beatles?
• Name the rapper whose first album featured these hits: “Can’t Nobody Hold Me Down” and “I’ll Be Missing You”?
• Which Fleetwood Mac album sold 19 million units and spent 31 weeks at #1: Fleetwood Mac or Rumours?
• Name the folk group who had five of their first six albums hit #1.