Bob Marley’s ‘Legend’ Now Certified 14X Platinum In The UK
Bob Marley & The Wailers’ greatest hits collection Legend is now certified 14X Platinum in the United Kingdom.
The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) revealed on Friday (August 12) that the album was issued another platinum award after it sold an additional 300,000 units in the UK since August 2020. According to the BPI, Legend has sold over 4,200,000 units total in the country, as measured by The Official Charts Company.
Legend is now tied with Michael Jackson’s Bad, Dire Straits’ Brothers In Arms, and Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours for eighth place among the best-selling albums of all time in the UK.
Queen’s Greatest Hits is No. 1 with a 23 times Platinum Award, followed by ABBA’s Gold: Greatest Hits at 20x Platinum, The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band at 18X Platinum, Adele’s 21 at 17X Platinum, Oasis’ (What’s The Story) Morning Glory at 16X Platinum, Michael Jackson’s Thriller at 15X Platinum and Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon at 15X Platinum.
The almost 40-year-old album was released by Island Records in 1984, some three years after Marley died from cancer at the age of 36.
Legend bears 14 of the Reggae superstar’s most-loved tunes including No Woman, No Cry (1974), Jamming (1977), Is This Love (1978), and Could You Be Loved (1980) and Buffalo Solider, which are all currently certified platinum in the UK, having sold more than 600,000 units each, and Three Little Birds, which was was certified double platinum earlier this year after it sold more than 1,200,000 units in the country.
The other songs on the collection are Get Up Stand Up, Exodus, I Shot The Sheriff, Stir It Up, One Love, Redemption Song, and Waiting In Vain.
It is the best-selling Reggae album of all time, with more than 15 million sold in the United States, according to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and an estimated 33 million copies sold globally.
Legend had debuted at No. 54 on the Billboard 200 in 1984. It was a regular fixture on the chart, until 1991—when Billboard made “old” albums ineligible for the listing. In 2009, Billboard repealed that rule and the album returned to the chart and later peaked at No. 5 in 2014.
This week, the album remains on the Billboard 200 chart for its 742nd week at the No. 82 position, making it the second album, after Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, to hit 14 years on that chart.
Legend has also spent 1,042 weeks in the top 100 of the UK Albums Chart—the third-longest run in that chart’s history. It’s currently at the No. 19 position on the chart.
On the weekly Billboard Reggae Album chart, Legend holds the No. 1 spot for the 135th week in a row since January 2020.