QUEEN's 'Absolute Greatest' Certified Double Platinum In U.K.

January 18, 2010

QUEEN's "Absolute Greatest" — the ultimate compilation of the band's most popular, enduring and iconic songs on EMI Music's Parlophone Records — has been certified double platinum in the United Kingdom for sales in excess of 600,000 copies. The LP entered the album chart at No. 3, having shipped in excess of 250,000 units in the first week of sales.

QUEEN's first "Greatest Hits" album is officially the United Kingdom's biggest-selling album ever. According to the BPI, the album has sold in excess of 5.6 million copies, outselling THE BEATLES' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" album by almost a million copies.

In an industry first, QUEEN joined up with Logitech to offer "Absolute Greatest" exclusively on the company's new Logitech Squeezebox Radio Wi-Fi music player. Owners of the Logitech Squeezebox Radio were able to listen to the new QUEEN album before it hit the shops last November and experience a series of unique QUEEN photos and track-by-track audio commentaries recorded by the band.

The release of "Absolute Greatest" on the Logitech Squeezebox Radio was the latest in a long-established record of firsts QUEEN had brought to the music industry. "Bohemian Rhapsody" (1975) was at first considered too long for successful radio play, but is now recognized as one of the greatest singles of all time. It's video was also the first genuine promotional video. In 1981, QUEEN became the first band to make a stadium tour of South America. There, in March that year, they played a single concert to 131,000 people in Sao Paolo, the largest paying audience for any band anywhere in the world. A second concert the following night drew an additional 120,000 people.

Ten years later, QUEEN made the first-ever commercial release of a collection of videos ("Greatest Flix", 1991). And more recently still, the band brought their music to new generations through different art forms, like choreographer Maurice Béjart's "Ballet For Life", and their stage musical with Ben Elton, "We Will Rock You", now in its eighth sell-out year in London and seen worldwide by over 10 million people.

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