Summer is ending, but Jimmy Buffett’s greatest hits album hit Billboard’s top 10 for the first time

Buffet's "Greatest Hit(s)" album is getting a lot of attention after the iconic singer's death

Summer is ending, but Jimmy Buffett’s greatest hits album hit Billboard’s top 10 for the first time
Jimmy Buffett Photo: Rodin Eckenroth

Beloved island-rock troubadour Jimmy Buffett died earlier this month, leaving behind—if absolutely nothing else—a legacy of some damn good songs that perfectly capture and define a specific laidback, beach-y vibe. And, as is usually the case when an artist with that kind of catalog dies, a lot of people are going back and listening to their hits. In fact, so many people are checking out Buffett’s Songs You Know By Heart: Jimmy Buffett’s Greatest Hit(s) collection from 1985 (A+ gag in that album title, by the way) that the album has cracked the top 10 on the Billboard 200 chart for the first time ever. As noted by Billboard, this is the first time it even made it past the top 40.

Songs You Know By Heart also, naturally, contains Buffett’s one and only single that made it to the top 10 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, “Margaritaville,” which made it to number eight in 1977. And though that wash is only top 10 single, he had plenty of other top 10 albums. In fact, Songs You Know By Heart is now his 13th album to reach that level, out of the more than 30 studio albums he recorded before his death and the dozens of compilations and live albums he put out over the years.

Billboard also notes that, while Songs You Know By Heart previously peaked at just number 100 in the ‘80s, it was certified platinum in 1989 after shipping 1 million copies and has apparently sold 8.26 million copies since then, according to electronic sales-tracker Luminate, which means it’s hovering somewhere around 10 million copies sold at this point (give or take a few million). So yeah, Buffett is getting some new attention now, but he was at least never starved for it during his life.

 
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