In the '80s, Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon dominated Billboard's "Top Pop Catalog Albums" chart, in large part because that was the decade CDs were introduced, and Dark Side was a standard purchase for people looking to test out their new toy. In the '90s, Legend: The Best Of Bob Marley And The Wailers surged, in step with a renewed undergrad interest in mellow vibes and jammin'. Well, last week Billboard released its chart of the best-selling Catalog Albums of the '00s, and while Pink Floyd came in reliably at #3 and Bob Marley at #2, the new Catalog champ was something of a surprise: Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band's Greatest Hits, which was first released in 1994.
Why Seger? Why now? Does this have anything to do with Seger's longstanding reluctance to release his catalog digitally (thereby depriving music-lovers of the chance to cherry-pick their favorite Seger songs and make their own "greatest hits")? Or do people just really, really like those Chevy commercials?