Bob Marley’s ‘Legend’ Spends 200th Week At No. 1 On Billboard Reggae Albums Chart

Legend, the Bob Marley & The Wailers’ greatest hits collection, has now spent 200 non-consecutive weeks at the No. 1 position on the Billboard Reggae Albums chart.

It has spent a total of 201 weeks on the Reggae chart, including one week in September 2022 when it was briefly dethroned by American reggae band Stick Figure’s Wisdom.

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), One Love (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 certified double platinum 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, Redemption Song, and Waiting In Vain.

Legend stands as the best-selling Reggae album of all time, with over 15 million units sold in the United States alone, as certified by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which awarded it a 15x Platinum certification in 2014.

In the United Kingdom, the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) has certified the album as 14x Platinum, recognizing over 4.2 million units sold, as tracked by The Official Charts Company.

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  In 2009, Billboard repealed that rule and the album returned to the chart and later peaked at No. 5 in 2014.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 808th week, at the No. 132 position, making it the second album, after Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, to hit 15 years on that chart.

Legend has also spent 1,107 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. 75 position on the chart, down from its 1984 peak at No. 1.

Elsewhere on the Billboard Reggae chart dated November 18, Bob Marley and the Wailers’ Catch A Fire has re-entered the listing at No. 5, following a Universal Music reissue last week to celebrate the album’s 50th anniversary.

Shaggy’s Best of Shaggy: The Boombastic Collection is at No. 2, followed by Sean Paul’s Dutty Classics Collection and Dutty Rock at No. 3 and 4.

UB40’s Greatest Hits album is at No. 6, followed by Stick Figure’s Wisdom, Set In Stone, and World On Fire albums at No. 7, 8, and 9, respectively.

Byron Messia’s No Love, the only recently released album on the chart, is at No. 10.