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The Beatles Have The Fourth-Most Top 10 Albums Of All Time

Hugh McIntyre
This article is more than 4 years old.

This week, The Beatles are back in the top 10 on the U.S. albums chart with their latest collection, Live at the Hollywood Bowl. The new live effort kicks off at No. 7 with 36,000 equivalent units shifted, and while that chart placement and the number of units moved aren’t particularly impressive for one of the best-selling groups of all time, it does keep the Fab Four in some pretty rare company.

Live at the Hollywood Bowl is The Beatles’ 32nd top 10 album, which is an incredible feat for any act. Since Billboard began curating and releasing the Billboard 200, the all-encompassing albums ranking that measures the 200 most popular titles in any week based on an algorithm that combines sales and streams, only four acts have managed to place at least 30 titles in the top 10. According to Billboard, The Beatles are still at the lower end of the list, but they are joined by The Rolling Stones (who have 36), Barbra Streisand (34) and Frank Sinatra (33).


That list is an impressive one, and it’s interesting in that two of the names on it are still recording and releasing new material, while the other half isn’t. The Beatles are of course no longer together, but that doesn’t mean the brand is any less powerful than it was decades ago. There are still enough superfans out there that continue to snap up re-released, remastered versions of previous records, live albums and various compilations, so more top 10s could be in the future for The Beatles, and soon they may match, and then pass, Frank Sinatra, who hasn’t charted an album in the highest reaches of the Billboard 200 since 1994.

On the other hand, both The Rolling Stones and Barbra Streisand are still working, churning out new material under their powerful monikers. While the Stones aren’t terribly prolific in the studio these days, Streisand has never stopped producing new records, and in fact, she debuted her new collection Encore: Movie Partners Sing Broadway at No. 1 earlier this month, proving how popular she remains to this day.

Live at the Hollywood Bowl marks the first top 10 for The Beatles since a 2013 collection of their live recordings from the BBC. The last time the group was featured in the top spot on the albums tally in America was back in 2000, when the incredibly-popular greatest hits compilation 1 owned the ranking for weeks on end. Impressively, the record labels that own the rights to The Beatles music have continued to churn out new material for decades, and almost every year there is a new collectible item for those that just can’t get enough of the group.

While they may have 32 top 10 albums to their credit, that is still just a fraction of the band’s output, technically speaking. There are plenty of box sets, bootlegs, live albums and so on that sell well enough to chart, but which don’t make it into the top 10. Altogether, The Beatles have appeared on the Billboard 200 dozens of times, and 32 albums is truly just a small figure when it comes to that one rock act from Liverpool.

