'Fair-weather fans and the plain uncool': How the Eagles' Greatest Hits broke the US charts

Released 50 years ago this year, Their Greatest Hits isn't on any "best album of all time" lists, yet it's sold more than The Dark Side of the Moon, Purple Rain and Abbey Road combined – why is it so phenomenally popular?

If you owned a record player in 1976, chances are you also owned at least one of the two Eagles albums released that year. The second was the more obvious choice. It had the band's signature song as its title track, produced two number one singles, and is comfortably their most critically acclaimed work. In 2012, Rolling Stone called it the 37th greatest LP of all time. It's also proved phenomenally popular and enduring, and is currently the third-best-selling record ever in the US.

Warning: This article contains language that some may find offensive.

But it's statistically more likely that you picked up the first of the two discs, the one that doesn't have Hotel California on it and isn't on any "best album of all time" lists. It's a record the Eagles themselves didn't want to issue and which their biggest fans would have had little reason to buy. 

And yet, in purely commercial terms, Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975), released 50 years ago this year, is the Eagles' defining work. In fact, you could argue that it's the defining work of American pop music. On 22 January this year, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) awarded the LP the first ever quadruple diamond certification, for 40 million copies sold. It's officially the most popular album of all time in the US, and one of the top five globally.

Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys coined the term "imperial phase" to describe an era when an artist can do no wrong, commercially speaking, and the Eagles were certainly in the midst of theirs when their record company, Asylum, issued their first "best of" set. 

Their fourth album, 1975's One of These Nights, had been the band's big breakthrough and first number one, and they were halfway through a run of six consecutive top five singles (including four chart toppers). They were also at a crossroads. Bluegrass-influenced multi-instrumentalist Bernie Leadon (formerly of country rock pioneers the Flying Burrito Brothers) had left, taking with him the last of the group's early country-folk flavour and clearing the way for the full-on soft rock of Hotel California.

The cover of Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975) seemed to signal this transition from dusty Americana to sleek '70s studio excess. It depicts a painted eagle skull sitting atop a sheet of silver mylar, with the material's textured, reflective surface looking a lot like a mirror covered in cocaine (a supposedly accidental resemblance that did not go unremarked on by the band or fans).  

According to biographer Marc Eliot, in To The Limit: The Untold Story of the Eagles, the push to release a "best of" came from incoming Asylum boss Joe Smith, who was seeking to raise funds while the band themselves (responsible for over 50% of the label's revenue in the mid-'70s) delayed work on their fifth album in an attempt to renegotiate their royalties deal.

Drummer-vocalist Don Henley called the record "the forced and hideous marriage of art and commerce" and told Eliot that Asylum "didn't give a shit whether the greatest hits album was good or not. They just wanted product." Henley, who'd envisioned the Eagles' second LP, Desperado, as a concept album, particularly objected to the inclusion of its tracks stripped of their thematic context.

The concept of Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975 is entirely........

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