Shania Tops Whitney for Best-Selling Album by a Female
Call it pop. Call it country. Call it what you will, but the music featured on Shania Twain‘s third album Come on Over has managed to transcend genre in becoming the best-selling album by a solo female artist of all time, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.
In their year-end certification roundup, the RIAA had Come on Over clocking in at eighteen times platinum. The album’s latest round of honors furthers its previous distinction as the best-selling country music album of all time, but in hitting the eighteen million copies sold mark, Come on Over toppled Whitney Houston‘s soundtrack for The Bodyguard to set a record for a female artist.
Though Come on Over‘s eighteen million sales fall significantly short of the Eagles’ Their Greatest Hits (twenty-seven million) and Michael Jackson’s Thriller (twenty-six million), in a mere three years, the album is within spitting distance of the boys’ club of best-selling classics. The album tied the cert mark for the Beatles’ “White Album,” and Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors, and Twain trails Led Zeppelin IV and Billy Joel’s Greatest Hits Vol. 1 & 2 by four and three million copies, respectively.
While Come on Over made the biggest ripples, Twain’s second album, The Woman in Me also received a new certification, as the RIAA had it checking in at twelve million copies sold to date.