The 1990s
At the beginning, Phil Collins ('... But Seriously') and Meat Loaf ('Bat Out Of Hell II') claimed the sales; then Simply Red's 'Stars' (1991) became the first album to be top-seller for two consecutive years.
The same year also saw the release of one of the decade's defining albums, Nirvana's 'Nevermind'... And it was thanks to an 18-year-old Dolly Parton song that 1992's 'The Bodyguard' went on to become the best-selling album of 1993...
But it was newcomers Oasis who would come to dominate the decade, and - with over four million copies of '(What's The Story) Morning Glory' sold - notch up the best-selling album of the 90s along the way...
That same year, Robson & Jerome became unexpected chart stars... And a quarter of a century after they broke up, the Beatles were still going strong - thanks to the 'Anthology' releases, they sold a million albums in 1996 alone...
Classical music, meanwhile, was safe in the hands of Luciano Pavarotti, Nigel Kennedy and Vanessa Mae and reaching a growing audience...
Radiohead's 'OK Computer', still regularly voted the greatest album ever made, was released in 1997 - as was Oasis' 'Be Here Now', which became the fastest-selling album ever released in the UK (the record-breaking 696,000 copies sold in the first three days accounting for a staggering 30% of the total UK album market that week)...
Patrick Humphries
