I'll post the point I made early which seems to either have been ignored or misunderstood..

Thriller
US Sales : 29 Million (#1 biggest selling album in the US)
UK Sales : 4.275 Million (#6 biggest selling album in the UK).

Bad.
US Sales : 9 Million (Not in the top 100 selling albums in the US).
Uk Sales : 3.9 Million (#9 biggest selling album in the UK).

US Population : 321,000,000
UK Population : 65,000,000

Total sales of Thriller + Bad in the US = 38 million.
Total sales of Thriller + Bad in the UK = 8.1 Million.

US Sales / US Population * 100 = 11.8%
UK Sales / UK population * 100 = 12.5%

It's pretty even but surprisingly maybe those 80's album sold more copies per head in the UK. Clearly Thriller was a bigger deal in the US, but Bad had a massive tail off in the US, where in the UK it nearly matched Thriller.

neither mate... as i pointed out, you cannot judge the popularity of any artist by comparing the sales of only 2 albums. it only highlights that 2 albums were more popular here % wise.

to use sales as a guide you would have to add up all the sales in both countries and compare those with the % of the population like you did for 2 albums.

id accept those figures whatever they show.

Post #3 only includes stats for those two albums, and those are the stats we've been debating and referring back too.

But for clarity I'll do it later

Ive been referring to the chart success, but like i said, IF the total sales % wise tell a different story the chart success suggests, then thats fine and ill accept it. I know its not very solid, referring to chart placings and indeed the actual sales may show something different. Tbh though i dont care.

Ok continuing...

Recap :
US Sales of Thriller + Bad = 38 Million.
UK Sales of Thriller + Bad = 8.1 Million.

So..

Off The Wall :
US Sales : 8 Million.
UK Sales : 1.8 Million.

Dangerous :
US Sales : 7 Million.
UK Sales : 2 Million.

HIStory :
US Sales : 7 Million.
UK : 1.2 Million.

Invincible :
US Sales : 2 Million.
UK Sales : 300,000.

As for his first 4 albums the informations is more limited...

Got To Be There :
US Sales : 900,000. (Cert Gold.)
UK Sales : Unknown - Charted at 37.

Ben
US Sales : Unknown (Not Certified)
UK Sale : Unknown (Cert Silver)

Albums 3 & 4 (Music & Me, Forever Michael) were flops - charting at 92 & 101 in the US and not charting at all in the UK.

These sales will be a tiny ripple in a ocean, but for clarity I'm going to say these 4 abums combined sold 1.5 Million in the US and 100,000 for the UK.

MJ has never been that bigger seller when it's come to Greatest Hits packages (vs Studio Album). His big selling hits album (in both the US and UK) is 'Number Ones' so i'll include that as well :

Number Ones :
US Sales : 5 Million.
UK Sales : 2.2 Million.

So new Totals are now :
Total US Sales : 68.5 Million.
Total UK Sales : 15.7 Million.

US Sales / US Population * 100 = 21.34%
UK Sales / UK population * 100 = 24.15%

Surprising the gap actually increased in favour of the UK.

sorry to make you work for all that.. fair play!

Not remotely a MJ fan, don't own any of his albums. I did grown up in the 80's though and I do remember MJ being hugely popular in my school days - horrid memories of School disco's with all the lads trying to moonwalk (including me...). Due to my age the Bad period was very memorable (I was 11) and most kids at school had a copy of that album (and by copy I mean copy ).

I actually got dragged to the London MJ experience stage show last year (that'll teach me for buying the wife a 'buy a gift theatre experience!') - It was actually worse than I imagined it would be!

bib.... see i didnt witness that, not anything more then what was heaped on the other artists at the time anyway. yep there were jacko fans, queen fans, wham, duran duran, etc etc etc. he was just one more big act. true, he went on to become rather big ...lol.. and outlasted many of his contemporaries.

but tbh i saw more jacko fondness in the early 70's, alongside donny osmond, david cassidy, marc bolan, then i did in the early/mid 80's.

sorry to hear about your unfortunate experience there...lol.