Greatest Hits

Originally released in October 1981, Greatest Hits comprised Queen's biggest chart successes, from their first chart appearance in 1974 with ‘Seven Seas of Rhye’, up to ‘Flash’ in 1980. It is Queen’s best-selling album to date, with total sales of over 25 million copies, also making it one of the most successful albums of all time.

Greatest Hits has spent 1,195 weeks on the UK albums chart and has been certified 23× platinum status. It is among the longest-charting albums in the US too, spending 688 weeks on the Billboard 200 and achieving 9× platinum. There was no universal track listing for the album, as each territory's tracks were dependent on the particular singles released there, and which were most successful. There have also been many different worldwide variations of the Greatest Hits cover, as both a single and a double album and this is the definitive version.

The cover photo that appeared on the UK and US release was taken by Lord Snowdon at his home studio, using only natural light. The now iconic image was skewed on the initial and best known 1981 release, but was later presented as originally taken.

In July 2022 the album made UK chart history with Queen becoming the first act ever to reach 7 million UK chart sales according to the Official charts company making it the best-selling album of all time in the UK, reaching this record-breaking achievement through a combination of physical sales, downloads and streams. At that point Greatest Hits had accumulated an incredible 1.26 billion total UK streams to date, with the album’s most streamed track being ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, boasting 240 million UK streams and counting.