AC/DC – Back in Black cover

Maybe also kids know that Michael Jackson “Thriller” , with an amount that is around 112 million, holds the record for the biggest selling album in music history, but just as many will probably wonder who will occupy the second position of this special prize.

1980 is a very difficult year for the Australian hard rock band AC/DC: Feb. 19 the singer Bon Scott died of alcohol problems. The distress is palpable within the group so that according to Angus Young the idea of ​​dissolution was becoming more than just a simple and unlikely event. Encouraged by the arrival of Brian Johnson, former singer of Geordie, as well as great lyricist, and by the return into the steering committee of producer Robert John “Mutt” Lange, who previously had worked for the album Highway To Hell, AC/DC leave for the Bahamas to record the album which would have been a tribute to the historical voice recently deceased.

Following a number of organizational problems and related to unlikely climatic conditions (as noted in the first verses of Hell’s Bells), finally 25 June 1980 they published “Back in Black”, featuring a completely black cover commissioned by the band in mourning for the death of Scott: Atlantic Records did not see kindly to this solution but adjusts to the will of AC/DC as long as their logo was noted in silver.

The success of public and critics were immediate even if the first ranking was achieved only in motherland: the singles You Shook Me All Night Long, Shoot To Thrill, Hell’s Bells and the homonymous Back In Black allowed the album to reach the No. 4 position in the American Bilboard 200 but above all ensure exceptional longevity so that the disc returned to the charts for 131 weeks in a row. If we consider the successive editions of the album, Back In Black now has 22 times platinum in the U.S. and it’s estimated that the world can boast 49 million copies sold, reaching second place in the special list of all time.