As more and more people find themselves downloading music from iTunes and other music providers, album sales keep dropping. Despite sales being down, there were still a few standout albums in 2014. These albums transcended different genres and gave music lovers the chance to learn more about a few new artists and enjoy some of their old favorites.
Dolly Parton
Dolly Parton is a country music icon and winner of multiple Grammy awards and other music awards. Though the singer and sometime actress released albums in the past, her newest album found its way to the top ten in 2014. Blue Smoke features the singer belting out some of her top tunes of all time. Released at the same time that she took the stage for a new comeback tour, the album made its way onto the top selling albums of the year list and sold more than 200,000 copies by the end of the year.
Ed Sheeran
Newer artist Ed Sheeran came out swinging in 2014 with an album that featured one of the top songs of the year. “Don’t” became a hit with fans of different genres like Jordan Kurland and helped the artist become better known outside his native Britain. Originally released in the United Kingdom, the album spent several weeks on the charts in that country before finding its way to the United States. The album, titled X, topped the charts for eight weeks and sold more than 600,000 copies.
Coldplay
Fans of the British rock group Coldplay wondered if the band would ever recapture the success it did in earlier years. A highly publicized breakup between the lead singer Chris Martin and his Hollywood actress wife Gwyneth Paltrow helped bring more attention to the band. Ghost Stories, the newest album by the band, found success in both Britain and the United States. The album spent more than one month in the top spot before slipping a few spots, selling more than 400,000 copies.
Pharrel Williams
Though many of the top spots went to international artists, fans of different genres like Kurland will find that there were still a few American artists on the list of 2014’s biggest albums. The Pharrel Williams album Girl never made it to the top of the charts, but the album did have several hit songs and sold several hundred thousand copies. The top albums of 2014 transcended different genres and appealed to fans of all types of music.
