Albums that Spent the Most Time on Billboard Charts

Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon

When you think about some of the truly great albums of all time that have spent time on the album charts, it's worth noting Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon is still top dog.Released way back in March, 1973, the record spent an astounding 953 weeks on the Billboard charts, even spending a week at No. 1 in the U.S.

What's really interesting is it fell off the charts in 1988, only to re-appear with the introduction of the Top Pop Catalog Albums chart in May 1991, and has been a perennial feature ever since. It's a testament to the innovation and song writing the Pink Floyd brought to Abbey Road Studio when they created the masterpiece. 

Floyd's bassist and principal songwriter Roger Waters says he knew the band was onto something amazing when he played it for his wife.

"When the record was finished I took a reel-to-reel copy home with me and I remember playing it for my wife then, and I remember her bursting into tears when it was finished. And I thought, 'This has obviously struck a chord somewhere', and I was kinda pleased by that. You know when you've done something, certainly if you create a piece of music, you then hear it with fresh ears when you play it for somebody else. And at that point I thought to myself, 'Wow, this is a pretty complete piece of work,' and I had every confidence that people would respond to it."

Of all the albums that spent the most time on the Billboard 200, only two of the top five are non-compilations - Dark Side of the Moon and Metallica's Black Album, which sits at No. 4 with 542 weeks on the chart. Bob Marley's Legend (No. 2), Journey's Greatest Hits (No. 3), and Johnny Mathis' Greatest hits (No. 5), are all compilations.

The Black Album Shows Longevity

Metallica's Black Album

Metallica's 1991 record marked a massive change for the thrash band. The San Francisco quartet brought in uber producer Bob Rock to help them find a different sound as the band went from the brutally produced ...And Justice For All to a clear, hard-hitting sound that made the band more accessible to a much wider audience. It also helped that "Enter Sandman" became a staple of modern rock radio. The band also made a concerted effort to slow down, going from pure thrash to more grinding metal.

"…And Justice For All album sounds horrible, awful, can't fucking stand it," says Hetfield "That was our fancy stage, showing off too much. We knew we had to move on and the Black Album was the opposite. So when me and Lars got back together after a short break, I said, 'We gotta really try and write some shorter, to-the-point songs.'"

Metallica fans at the time were outraged the band was "selling out", which they were, to a certain extent, but there aren't many artists who don't want their work to be heard or seen. James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett, Jason Newsted, and Lars Ulrich can't be faulted for wanting to broaden their horizons and change things up.

Time, the ultimate arbiter of what becomes legendary, has shown how well the Black Album has held up and appealed to multiple generations, much like Dark Side of the Moon.

Check Out: How Pink Floyd created The Wall album

The Bricks that Built Pink Floyd's "The Wall"

Original artwork for The Wall

When you look at what it took to write and record Pink Floyd's The Wall, a double-album masterpiece, you really wonder how the band managed to keep it together without blowing up.

Released on Nov. 30 1979, and produced by Canadian Bob Ezrin, with mixed critical reaction at first, it soon topped the Billboard charts for some 15 weeks, and sold 3 million copies in the US by February, 1980. An amazing feat considering those involved in the year-long recording were at wits end and each other's throats.

And when you look back, much credit for getting it done goes to Canadian producer Bob Ezrin, who, like a good Canadian, played the ultimate peacekeeper.

From the outset it was Ezrin and Waters in charge of the album's direction. Ezrin actually moved the concept from the autobiographical nature Waters presented, to be more about the Pink character.

Ezrin was also the peace-maker between Waters and guitarist David Gilmour, whose relationship had really deteriorated by that point into near-constant fighting and a battle for power over the band's musical direction. As engineer Nick Griffiths later said of the Canadian producer:"Ezrin was very good in The Wall, because he did manage to pull the whole thing together. He's a very forceful guy. There was a lot of argument about how it should sound between Roger and Dave, and he bridged the gap between them."

Waters' Genesis of The Wall

Waters live in 1980

The idea of creating a concept album a la rock opera was from the genius of Pink Floyd principal songwriter and bassist Roger Waters. The main idea of building a wall arose after Pink Floyd's 1977 In The Flesh tour supporting their Animals album. During the final show in Montreal on July 6, 1977 (there is raw audio out there on the internet) Waters spat on an audience member, a culmination of his frustration with crowds not paying attention to the quieter songs throughout the tour's run. This led him to realize he'd become alienated from Floyd's fan base and he manifested that alienation through the songs on The Wall, modelling the lead character after himself and Syd Barrett, the band's former co-founder and guitarist, who went haywire because of drug use. In fact "Nobody Home" is likely about Barrett with the references of "wild staring eyes" and "the obligatory Hendrix perm", among others.

The actual story of the songs and the progression of the main character, Pink, is modelled after Waters' life with his father getting killed in World War Two in the Battle of Anzio in Italy. Then he deals with an abusive school teacher, an overbearing mother, the breakdown of his marriage and a spiral into drugs, isolation and alienation. The wall of bricks becomes the metaphor for Waters isolating himself from the fans.

Even the original album cover, with just bricks and no sign of who wrote the album or what it's even called, is a means to distance the band from fans.

Work on the songs began at Britannia Row Studios in Islington, London (which was built by Pink Floyd) in July 1978, and it was there that the famous children's chorus from "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)" was recorded. That song was Floyd's first ever No. 1 hit. But then, like the Rolling Stones and others before, the Floyd had to seek tax exile, so they were forced out of England and recording continued in Nice, France, New York and Los Angeles.

Drummer Nick Mason's parts early on were recorded in a large open space on the top floor of Britannia Row. His drums were first recorded on 16 tracks, then mixed down and then copied onto a 24-track master to act as a guide for the rest of the band to play along with. Of note is the fact the late, great Jeff Porcaro (studio session drummer and Toto member) played drums on "Mother".

The idea for orchestral accompaniment on "Comfortably Numb", "The Trial" and "Nobody Home" came from Ezrin. Members of the New York Philharmonic and New York Symphony orchestras, as well as a choir from the New York Opera recorded the parts at CBS studios in New York under the guidance of Michael Kamen. No members of the band were on hand when those parts were laid down.

Bricks in the Wall

Producer Bob Ezrin

Regarding "Comfortably Numb", the song was born out of the sessions for Gilmour's first solo record (self titled and released in 1978). The popular track became the source of huge blowup between Waters and Gilmour. According to Ezrin, the song germinated as "Roger's record, about Roger, for Roger". And Waters though it needed more work. So Waters rewrote the song and added more lyrics for the chorus, but Gilmour hated Waters' "stripped-down and harder" version. The guitarist wanted no orchestration in the body of the song, while Waters and Ezrin did. Following a full-scale argument in a North Hollywood restaurant, the two compromised – the song's body eventually included the orchestral arrangement, with Gilmour's second and final guitar solo standing alone. As Gilmour noted after the fact "I think things like "Comfortably Numb" were the last embers of mine and Roger's ability to work collaboratively together."

With Waters taking his place as the de facto band leader at this time, he wrote or co-wrote every song on The Wall, with Gilmour getting credit on "Comfortably Numb", "Young Lust" and "Run Like Hell". Ezrin received writing credit on "The Trial". In fact Waters had written enough songs to fill three albums, and many of those tracks not used on "The Wall" went onto The Final Cut.

It should be noted Ezrin was a huge fan of Gilmour and lobbied hard to get his material included on the record where there were holes in the story Waters set out.

"I really lobbied to fill it with Gilmour material, because my feeling was, at that point, we were one-sided musically," recalled Ezrin. "We were really missing the Gilmour influence and his heart. We had a lot of Roger’s angst and intellect, but we were missing the visceral Gilmour heart and swing. So then we started filling in the holes with Gilmour’s stuff. When there were certain holes left in the script, it would say, ‘To be written.’"

During the nearly year-long recording process, Water and keyboardist Richard Wright would have a major falling out that led to the latter being fired from the band. He received no credit on the original album release and was after-the-fact hired as a basic studio musician by the band.

Ezrin recalls how Waters was very tough on the keyboard player: "Rick was looking for respect from Roger and a sense that he was a valued member of the band. He was definitely feeling Roger becoming more and more distant from him. He was becoming insecure about his role. He had good reason to be. Roger was particularly hard on him". And Gilmour recalls Wright wasn't bringing much to the table back then.

In advance releasing the album, technical constraints led to some changes being made to the running order and content of The Wall, with "What Shall We Do Now?" being replaced by the similar but shorter "Empty Spaces", and "Hey You" being moved from its original place at the end of side three, to the beginning. Interestingly, with the November 1979 deadline quickly approaching, the band left the now-incorrect inner sleeves of the album unchanged.

After almost a year of recording and mixing, the band was under some pressure from their record label, CBS in the US and Harvest in the U.K., to get the album out for a Christmas release.

The Wall has since sold some 40 million copies worldwide and taken its place in music history as one of the greatest rock albums ever made.

Check out our look at how Pink Floyd made Wish You Were Here

Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here: Absence & Disillusionment

Suffice it to say, the making of Wish You Were Here was a time of uneasiness for Pink Floyd.

Tasked with making the follow-up to their landmark Dark Side of the Moon album (one of the best-selling records of all time), bassist Roger Waters, guitarist David Gilmour, drummer Nick Mason and keyboardist Rick Wright certainly weren't in the mindset where they could be super productive in the studio and write another Dark Side.

In fact they were struggling to come to terms with what they were doing, now that they'd made millions and ascended to among the biggest rock stars on the planet.

"In this post Dark Side of the Moon period, we were all having to assess what we were in this business for, why we were doing it and whether we were artists or business people," said Gilmour in the documentary The Story of Wish You Were Here. "Having achieved the sort of success and money out of all of that could fulfill anyone's wildest teenage dreams, why we would still want to continue to do it?"

Indeed, Waters has publicly stated that Pink Floyd was, for all intents and purposes, finished after Dark Side, in that there was nothing left to strive for as a band.

"We could have easily split up." - Roger Waters

Waters notes the band in 1975 was "at a watershed then and we could have easily split up, but we didn't because we were frightened of the great out there beyond the umbrella of this extraordinarily powerful and valuable trade name: Pink Floyd".

So with all these misgivings, the members began working at Abbey Road studios in January, 1975, setting about creating a new album, which would get released in September that year and go on to sell millions of copies.

However, it was a painfully slow grind plagued with infighting, particularly between Waters and Gilmour, as they struggled to come to terms with what the album should be and make new music to fit that vision.

Interestingly, the entire album got a kick start from those four, slow guitar notes that Gilmour strummed one day, which became the basis for "Shine On You Crazy Diamond". It was actually a song they had worked on before hitting the studio.

As their studio time got eaten up with nothing to show for it, Waters proposed taking "Shine On" and bookending the album with it, ultimately making it a nine-part track that was 26 minutes long.

Waters also wanted to axe two other songs they'd worked on in 1974 (which turned out to be "Sheep" and "Dogs" which appeared on Animals) in favour of writing new material. But Gilmour was adamantly opposed, wanting to use those two tracks along with "Shine On". This led to a huge fight between the two bandmates, with Waters ultimately winning the day.

"It felt cobbled to me. I didn't feel real," said Waters. "So at some point in the process, I came up with the idea that it has to be thematic.

Two Themes Emerge: Absence & Disillusionment

David Gilmour at Abbey Road in 1975

Two themes would emerge: Absence and the band's growing disillusionment with the record industry.

Waters came up with "Have a Cigar" and "Welcome to the Machine", two songs attacking the music business and it's eternal quest for the next big hit so record companies can fill their coffers off the backs of their recording artists - throwing them into the money-making machine.

For "Have A Cigar", neither Waters nor Gilmour could lay down a vocal that they thought suited the tone of song. They even tried singing it together, to no avail.

So they enlisted Roy Harper to handle vocals on that song, as he was working down in another Abbey Road studio.

And Harper nailed the tone of the lyrics as a greedy record exec who knows nothing about the artists working for him and only seeks to make more cash for the company.

"Everybody thought it was Roger," said Harper in the Wish You Were Here documentary. "I was a bit peed off at that."

Shine On You Crazy Diamond: An Ode to Syd Barrett

"Shine On You Crazy Diamond" is all about Syd Barrett, one of Floyd's founding members who was let go in 1968 because of his erratic behavior and apparent schizophrenia.

"He was kind of a crazy diamond and all of the things (the song) says about him in those brilliant lines are very, very accurate," said Gilmour, who replaced Barrett. "'You wore out your welcome with random precision' was certainly a part of him."

Waters wanted it to be a song "to get as close as possible to what I felt ... that sort of indefinable, inevitable melancholy about the disappearance of Syd."

Wright plays a brilliant keyboard piece as a tribute to Barrett that closes out the last 3:20 of "Shine On" (which is Part IX).

Syd Barrett shows up on June 5, 1975

Shockingly for the four members of Pink Floyd, Barrett actually showed up in the studio on June 5, 1975, as they were working on the final mix for "Shine On". But he wasn't the elegant, wasted rock star they'd seen seven year earlier. Barrett was bald and very overweight, so nobody recognized him as he stood in the control room.

"How remarkable, how long it was before anyone actually woke up," said Gilmour, who was the first to recognize the man as Syd Barrett during those extremely awkward minutes. "And then we were all unbelievably shocked at his appearance. (He'd) turned rather balloon shaped, had no eyebrows and little hair."

Storm Thorgerson, who did the covers for Wish You Were Here and Dark Side of the Moon, noted that both Waters and Gilmour cried when they finally recognized Barrett.

Absence in Wish You Were Here

The song "Wish You Were Here" isn't so much about Barrett as it is about Waters thinking about absence. The song got its initial seed from Gilmour playing the opening riff, and when Waters heard it, he loved it. Both Waters and Gilmour wrote the chords for the rest of the song, with Waters penning the amazing lyrics.

"That collaboration between David and I is really good," said Waters. "It's a much more universal expression of my feelings about absence. Because I felt that we weren't really there. We were very absent."

Gilmour says "Wish You Were Here" does remind him of the man he replaced.

"'Wish You Were Here' has a broader remit. I can't sing it without thinking about Syd," said Gilmour. "Because of the resonance and the emotional weight it carries, it is one of our best songs."

Check out our look at why The Final Cut is one of Pink Floyd's best albums

Top Five Feuds Between Rock Band Members

Much like a family, members of rock bands don't always see eye to eye and often aren't shy about venting their feelings and frustrations towards each other. Since the late 1960s, there have been plenty of in-band feuds that have gained headlines. Here are the top five feuds between members of the biggest rock bands in the world.

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards

Keith Richards and Mick Jagger

Jagger and Richards have been at odds since the mid 1970s, but things really came to head in the 1980s when the Glimmer Twins barely talked to each other and the Rolling Stones nearly broke up for good after releasing Dirty Work in 1986. That's because Mick reneged on his promise to tour behind the album, angering Richards. At the time the two didn't share the same vision for the direction of the Rolling Stones, especially Mick, who wanted to distance himself from the band and focus on his solo work and touring.

Richards was pissed Mick wanted to become a pop star outside of the band, and did some solo work of his own, taking shots at Jagger in the process with a song off his Talk Is Cheap record called "You Don't Move Me" with lyrics directed squarely at Jagger. But the two, for the greater good of the band and no doubt the money, got it together to record and tour for 1989's Steel Wheels album. Interestingly, on "Mixed Emotions", Richards maintains he sings "Mick's Demotions" during the chorus.

And, just when the two had been regularly recording and touring, the dormant feud erupted again when Richards took a shot at Jagger's "tiny dodger" in his 2010 memoir Life. Mick wasn't amused and demanded - and got - an apology from Richards. In that same book, Richards sums up his long relationship with Jagger: "How can you describe a relationship that goes that far back? Best friends are best friends. Brothers fight."

Liam and Noel Gallagher

Feuding brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher

The English brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher have no doubt been at each other's throats since they were kids, but as members of Oasis from 1991-2009, they engaged in one of the nastiest, most physical feuds ever by band members, most of them alcohol fueled. On their first tour of the U.S. in 1994, band vocalist Liam got a kick out of changing various song lyrics so they were derogatory to both Americans and his brother. This didn't sit well with Noel, who tossed a chair at his brother after one concert and a major brawl followed.

Then, while recording their second album (What's the Story) Morning Glory?, the brothers got involved in another brouhaha, this time with a cricket bat being used as a weapon after Liam invited everyone from the pub back into the studio while Noel was trying to work. This became the norm for the feuding siblings until 2009, when Noel finally had had enough. After yet another physical altercation with Liam, the band cancelled a show at the last minute on Aug. 28, 2009 in Paris. That night, Noel confirmed he was leaving the band because he "simply could not go on working with Liam a day longer."

Roger Waters and David Gilmour

Roger Waters and David Gilmour

Far more tame physically than the Gallagher brothers' feud, the animosity between Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters and guitarist David Gilmour was more a beef about power within Pink Floyd than anything else. After reaching the top of the mountain with "Dark Side of the Moon", Waters began to take more control in terms of the band's songwriting and indeed, wrote most of the material from Animals, The Wall through The Final Cut. In the process, Water was writing darker, more political material. Waters argues Gilmour wasn't bringing any songs to the table, so he wrote the tracks, getting publishing royalties in the process - more than Gilmour was taking in.

The band broke up after the Final Cut and, in 1985, Waters famously declared Pink Floyd was a "spent force creatively" and left the band. Gilmour, who wanted to keep Pink Floyd going, won a lengthy legal battle (Waters wanted to completely dissolve the band) to carry on under the Pink Floyd brand, releasing two so-so albums 1987's Momentary Lapse of Reason and 1994's The Division Bell.

Axl Rose and Slash

Axl Rose and Slash

The two most prominent members of Guns 'N Roses have mended their fences for the current reunion tour, but there was 20 years of animosity between the two after Slash left the band in 1996. In his 2007 biography, Slash stated he left Guns 'N Roses because of Rose's constant lateness to concerts, the alleged legal manipulation Rose used (since denied by Rose) to gain control of the band, and the departures of original drummer Steven Adler and guitarist Izzy Stradlin.

For his part, Rose stoked the fire with some nasty words in a 2009 interview, saying "Personally I consider Slash a cancer and better removed, avoided — and the less anyone heard of him or his supporters, the better." No doubt Rose knew Slash had lost his mother to cancer and the comments didn't sit well with the guitarist.

Rose also told Billboard in 2009 (when there was talk of a GNR reunion back then): "What's clear is that one of the two of us will die before a reunion and however sad, ugly or unfortunate anyone views it, it is how it is."

Looks like a lot of dollar bills have soothed any lingering acrimony between Slash and Rose. We'll hold our breath as to whether or not they record another GNR record together.

John Lennon and Paul McCartney

John Lennon and Paul McCartney

The two best known members of the Beatles saw cracks in their writing partnership emerging after Beatles manager Brian Epstein died suddenly in 1967. After that it was a slow dissolution of the Lennon/McCartney partnership that included Lennon feeling like his songs weren't getting their due over McCartney's tracks. McCartney noted he and Lennon were openly critical of each other's songs around the Abbey Road sessions. Also McCartney wanted to tour with the band again, but Lennon wanted none of it and he was tiring of McCartney's bossiness in the studio. These things, and others (Yoko Ono), created friction that ended with Lennon leaving the band in 1969.

But the Lennon/McCartney feud didn't end when the Beatles broke up. They wrote songs on their solo albums taking jabs at each other.

Lennon's Imagine album has a song called "How Do You Sleep?", which is directed squarely at McCartney with lyrics like "You live with straights who tell you was king. Jump when your momma tell you anything. The only thing you done was yesterday. And since you’re gone you’re just another day. A pretty face may last a year or two. But pretty soon they’ll see what you can do. The sound you make is muzak to my ears. You must have learned something in all those years."

McCartney took a shot at Lennon and Yoko Ono on the track "Too Many People" from the Ram record. The lyrics "Too many people preaching practices" and "You took your lucky break and broke it in two" are directed at Lennon.

Pink Floyd's The Final Cut: One of their Best Albums

Look around the internet for what people think are Pink Floyd's best albums, and The Final Cut usually rates as one of the worst, at least of those from the Roger Waters era.

It's too bad because The Final Cut is a lyrical masterpiece from Waters showcasing his true genius, and should get far more praise from Floyd fans than it does.

Released in 1983, it's a concept album decrying war and mocking the world leaders who make war. Originally intended as a soundtrack to The Wall movie, Waters quickly changed the album's direction after the Falkland Islands war began in April 1982. The war was a brief battle between Britain and Argentina, which had invaded the Falkland Islands (a British colony), prompting the British to retaliate and take them back.

For Waters this was a crazy move, after all his dad had died in Italy fighting for Britain in World War 2, and the idea that the British would go to war again after the horrors of the Second World War was ludicrous to him, especially over a couple of tiny, British held, islands. So he was prompted to change direction, and turn The Final Cut into a stand alone album.

What makes the album so good is Waters' emotion and bitterness. The songs are great, but he takes them to another level with all the emotion he puts into every song whether it's anger, outrage or heartfelt sadness.

The record opens with "The Post-War Dream" (questioning the British economy and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's move to attack Argentina). The song starts with the sound of a car radio tuning to a station, much like the final song on the album, "Two Suns in the Sunset", which also features a car driving down the road, so the album starts where it ends. Waters lyrics on that last track take thoughts of warfare from conventional to nuclear in a stunning first-person narrative of anger and despair, that really kicks in heavy at the 2:17 mark as a nuclear bomb explodes.

A 2004 re-release of The Final Cut includes "When the Tigers Broke Free" as track No. 4. The song first appeared on the Wall movie, and describes in detail how Waters' father, Eric Fletcher Waters, died under fire from the German army holding the Anzio bridgehead in Italy in 1944 (Eric Waters died in a town called Aprilla, some 10 km from Anzio when his company was surrounded by German forces). In the song, you can hear the venom in Waters' voice in when he sings "And that's how the High Command took my daddy from me." It's that bitterness, that raw emotion that really makes The Final Cut the stellar album it really is. And when you know the history of Waters' father and Waters feelings about his death, The Final Cut is made that much more poignant.

Standout Songs on The Final Cut

Waters pays further homage to his late father in the amazing "Fletcher Memorial Home", which takes its title from his dad's name. It's a mellow song ridiculing some key world leaders like Ronald Reagan, Thatcher, Richard Nixon, Leonid Brezhnev, Ian Paisley and Joseph McCarthy. Waters paints them as "Colonial wasters of life and limb" who should be sent to a retirement home with a group of "anonymous Latin American meat-packing glitterati" where they can act like children and abuse themselves. The track features a standout, piercing David Gilmour guitar solo (it wasn't just a Waters solo album). And never one to mince words, Waters concludes the song by saying "the final solution can be applied" to these out of touch world leaders.

Another standout track is "Not Now John" with David Gilmour handling lead vocals, even though Waters wrote it and does some vocal work on the song. It's easily the most hard rocking track on the record with a heavy guitar riff and a thumping drum beat. "Not Now John" examines the global policy at the time and harkens to people only caring about trivial things "Who cares what it's about as long as the kids go". The final part of the song is sung by Waters who mocks global and British foreign policy and how "We showed Argentina, now let's go and show these. Makes us feel tough and wouldn't Maggie be pleased." Then he's heard wailing "Oh Britannia, Britannia" but mocking the British Empire with his tone.

The album's title track is a leftover from The Wall sessions, and while it's a great song, the theme of isolation and suicide doesn't quite fit the war and economic elements of the album. It fits much better into The Wall, although the sound and Waters' impressive effort on vocals, fits right into The Final Cut.

Final Cut is not a Waters Solo Album

Gilmour and Waters

Many decry the album as a Roger Waters solo effort, which just isn't the case. Sure Waters and Gilmour were fighting and had essentially split, but Gilmour still plays some phenomenal guitar on the record and drummer Nick Mason is steady as always. Only keyboardist Richard Wright was missing after getting booted from the band during sessions for The Wall. Yes, Waters wrote all the songs on Cut, but that was nothing new for Pink Floyd since the Animals record as he took over more and more writing duties because Gilmour and Wright didn't bring much to the table. Since Wish You Were Here, Gilmour only wrote "Dogs", and co-wrote on three Wall tracks ("Young Lust", "Comfortably Numb" and "Run Like Hell"). So The Final Cut is no more of a Waters solo album than any of those previous Pink Floyd releases.

If you have written off The Final Cut - Pink Floyd's last great album - as not being worth listening to, check it out again. It's actually a very strong Floyd record and sounds amazing the morning after a night of very heavy drinking.

Read how Pink Floyd chose the songs for The Wall and how a Canadian had a huge impact on that record