The Best-Selling UK Albums of 1990
Introduction
Hello you. Make a cup of tea. Put a record on. 1990 was an identity crisis set to music. Thatcher was finally dragged out by her own lot, but the damage was done. The yuppies were still sniffing their way through Kensington, the dole queues weren’t getting shorter, and the M25 was already a car park with delusions of grandeur. Everyone was tired. No one trusted the future.
Musically, it was a holding pattern. The acid house comedown had started, grunge hadn’t arrived, and the indie kids were still too shy to leave the rehearsal room. The charts were full of safe bets. Greatest hits, adult angst, orchestral shouting. The public clung to what they understood and bought Phil Collins instead of the revolution.
Typical.
10. Serious Hits... Live! (Phil Collins)
Context
The Berlin Wall had just come down and Phil Collins decided to play both sides of it. By helicopter. Because of course he did. It was part Live Aid guilt, part career flex. And somehow, it worked.
Why It Mattered
Phil was unstoppable. He’d gone solo, gone global, and now he was going live. This album sold in droves, mostly to people who already owned the studio versions but needed something to play in the Rover on the way to B&Q. It was wallpaper music for people too scared to buy Violator.
Definitive Track
"In the Air Tonight", complete with that drum fill, thumped out in front of a German stadium crowd who somehow didn’t riot. It’s the sound of 80s paranoia getting one last stadium encore.
9. Sleeping with the Past (Elton John)
Context
By the end of the 80s, Elton was trying to behave. He'd cleaned up, sort of, and decamped to Denmark to record with Bernie Taupin like it was 1973 again. The result was this: synths, soft focus, and an odd obsession with 60s soul.
Why It Mattered
It flopped when it came out. Then the Brits, never ones for immediacy, decided six months later that Sacrifice was the sound of their emotional constipation. It hit number one, Elton’s first, and dragged the whole album back with it. Suddenly he was respectable again. Middle-aged misery had a soundtrack.
Definitive Track
Sacrifice. Played at funerals, divorces, and every Radio 2 request show between 1990 and 2004. The song you put on when you want to cry but still feel dignified.
8. Now That’s What I Call Music! 18 (Various Artists)
Context
By 1990, the Now series was less a compilation and more a cultural landfill. Every three months: another plastic tray of chart leftovers, another TV advert voiced by someone who used to be in Five Star. Volume 18 came out swinging with Technotronic, Sinead O’Connor, and the dregs of Stock Aitken Waterman.
Why It Mattered
Because it was easy. You didn’t need taste, just a Woolies gift voucher and a passing interest in what Radio 1 was vomiting out. Parents bought it for kids. Kids played track one and skipped the rest. It went double platinum.
Definitive Track
The Power by Snap! That opening line. That synth stab. That moment where you believed, however briefly, that German Eurodance might be the future.
7. Only Yesterday: Their Greatest Hits (Carpenters)
Context
Released thirteen years after Karen Carpenter’s death, and two decades after the actual hits, this was less an album and more an emotional audit. Britain loves a reappraisal, especially when it involves soft harmonies and unresolved grief.
Why It Mattered
Because silence had finally fallen. After a decade of synths, screaming, and sax solos, the British public decided they wanted melancholy with a side of melody. The Carpenters were easy to underrate in life and impossible to ignore in death. This became the quietest chart invasion of the year.
Definitive Track
Superstar. Karen’s voice, barely above a whisper, bleeding out over a lounge arrangement. Still sounds like heartbreak being politely explained.
6. The Essential Pavarotti (Luciano Pavarotti)
Context
Nessun Dorma had soundtracked Italia '90 and turned a generation of lagered-up England fans into accidental opera buffs. Pavarotti, already a global name, suddenly had mass appeal in a country that usually preferred shouting over singing.
Why It Mattered
It was the closest the UK charts got to cultural sophistication that year. Everyone owned it. No one played past track one. It sat on CD racks next to Simply Red and seemed to imply depth. Sales said opera was cool now. They lied.
Definitive Track
Nessun Dorma. The moment Gazza cried, Lineker clocked it, and British masculinity discovered it had feelings after all.
5. Soul Provider (Michael Bolton)
Context
This was the year power ballads reached maximum cholesterol. Bolton, all hair and howling, was America’s answer to a question nobody in Britain had asked. But the public still bought it, because there’s always a market for high-volume heartbreak and men who look like they smell of conditioner.
Why It Mattered
It hit that sweet spot between faux soul and adult contemporary. Safe enough for the school run, dramatic enough for divorcees. Bolton somehow outsold British acts with actual relevance. He wasn’t cool, but he was available. That was enough.
Definitive Track
How Am I Supposed to Live Without You. A song so over-sung it should come with a seatbelt. Still ends up on every karaoke list next to Angels and I Will Always Love You.
4. The Very Best of Elton John (Elton John)
Context
Not content with charting a brand-new album that year, Elton also lobbed out a greatest hits double-disc, just to remind everyone how much of their lives he already owned. Released with no subtlety and no new material. Just hits. Relentless, imperial hits.
Why It Mattered
It was Elton for people who didn’t want to commit to a full album. No deep cuts, no filler, just the stuff you vaguely remembered from weddings and late-night Radio 2. It sold because it was undeniable. Like a greatest hits by gravity.
Definitive Track
Rocket Man. The song that makes grown men cry at BBQs, usually right before telling you how they almost learned piano.
3. In Concert (The Three Tenors)
Context
Recorded at the Baths of Caracalla during Italia '90, this was classical music packaged like a heavyweight title fight. Pavarotti, Domingo and Carreras, all belting it out for a global audience who didn’t know Verdi from a Volvo but liked the idea of it.
Why It Mattered
It made opera accessible in the most unsubtle way possible. The album became a middle-class status symbol and a coffee table accessory, bought by people who thought buying opera counted as listening to it. It sold because it looked clever, not because it was played.
Definitive Track
Nessun Dorma. Again. Second time on this list. The aria that somehow outperformed half the indie scene without breaking a sweat.
2. The Immaculate Collection (Madonna)
Context
By 1990, Madonna had nothing left to prove. She’d outlived the moral panic, steamrolled the charts, and invented pop stardom as a blood sport. This was the victory lap. A greatest hits compilation released while she was still mid-sprint.
Why It Mattered
Because it’s flawless. Seventeen tracks, all killers, remixed with studio trickery that still holds up. This wasn’t nostalgia. This was canonisation. Every other artist on this list was flogging leftovers. Madonna dropped this and reminded everyone who owned the decade.
Definitive Track
Vogue. Not her biggest hit, but her most enduring trick. A dancefloor commandment disguised as fashion advice. Still sharper than most things released last week.
1. ...But Seriously (Phil Collins)
Context
Released at the tail end of 1989, but it steamrolled through 1990 like a Mondeo through a retail park. Thatcher was on her last legs, yuppiedom was hollowed out, and Phil Collins was there with a furrowed brow and a Yamaha keyboard to narrate the collapse.
Why It Mattered
Because Britain wanted to feel something, but not too much. Phil sang about homelessness, war, broken homes, and personal regret, but in a way you could still put on during dinner. It sold over 2.5 million copies in the UK. That’s not success. That’s surrender.
Definitive Track
Another Day in Paradise. Bleeding-heart liberalism with a drum machine. Played in boardrooms and wine bars by people who stepped over rough sleepers on the way in.
Why You Should Care
1990 was a year clinging to the past in a decade pretending to move forward. Greatest hits, opera gimmicks, stadium ballads from men with expensive mullets. The top ten was less a chart and more a denial mechanism. Change was coming, but you wouldn't know it from this lot.
The UK didn’t want revolution. It wanted reassurance. And it bought millions of CDs to get it.
See you on down the road.
