Inventory Maybe 1 million Lou Bega fans can be wrong: 14 albums that surprisingly went platinum 

1. Hammer, The Funky Headhunter (1994)
Countless albums have gone platinum in spite of their meager artistic merits. It’s not surprising that bad records sell millions; what’s surprising is when bad records by artists who are way past their commercial prime sell millions. That’s the case with Hammer’s The Funky Headhunter, the misbegotten (yet decent-selling) album that attempted to reshape the pop-rapper’s nice-guy image into a harder, more “street” mold. Headhunter hardly succeeded in that goal, considering the professional and personal misfortunes that befell Hammer in the wake of the album’s release. The video for lead single “Pumps And A Bump”—which featured Hammer cavorting with bikini-clad ladies sans parachute pants, and wearing only a shlong-y Speedo—was widely mocked, and his decision to pick fights with A Tribe Called Quest, Run-DMC, and MC Serch of 3rd Bass in the lyrics to “Break ’Em Off Somethin’ Proper” just seemed silly. In retrospect, the platinum status of The Funky Headhunter is more a testament to how much Hammer’s popularity had declined from 1990’s multi-platinum Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ’Em than any supposed relevance four years later. 

2, Baha Men, Who Let The Dogs Out (2000)
The best part of being a music fan in the iTunes era is that if you have a shameful weakness for, say, LMFAO’s latest bit of earworm-y awfulness, you can download that song and that song only in the privacy of your own home. Back in the old days, even if people only liked one song, they had to buy the whole album, which inevitably pushed overly padded novelty LPs past the platinum mark. Exhibit A: Baha Men, who had been around, under one name or another, for a couple of decades before hitting it big with “Who Let The Dogs Out?” A cover of a song that became popular during Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago in 1998, it ended up on the soundtrack to Rugrats In Paris: The Movie and quickly became a fixture of television, movie trailers, and sporting events. Yes, there once was a time when the song “Who Let The Dogs Out” wasn’t considered a nuisance and people actively desired to seek it out. So actively, in fact, that over a million ponied up for Who Let The Dogs Out, the cannily titled name of the Baha Men album on which the song appears (as the first track). Despite those sales, and a follow-up single that borrowed from “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” Who Let The Dogs Out failed to produce any more substantial hits. Baha Men, however, gamely solider on. No doubt the group is playing “Who Let The Dogs Out” somewhere tonight.

3. Guns N’ Roses, Chinese Democracy (2008)
A variety of factors—inaccurate sales accounting, cheap record pricing, no iTunes—help to explain why it seemed relatively easy for albums to go platinum in the latter half of the 20th century. In the new century, it takes a lot of effort (and a fan base unwilling or unable to download your record illegally) to sell a million units. So what explains Guns N’ Roses’ forever-in-the-works 2008 opus Chinese Democracy reaching platinum status? By the time it finally came out after more than 10 years of studio tinkering, Democracy had seemingly outlasted much of the public’s interest in the album. Not only had Axl Rose fired or forced out all the other original members, it was assumed that whatever grit or magic that Appetite For Destruction possessed had worn away. And guess what? That assumption was right on the money.  You can still hear songs from Appetite playing in every sports arena in the country, but Democracy came and went without making any impact on pop-culture. (Even as a euphemism for “over-labored musical boondoggle,” it’s now been replaced by Dr. Dre’s still-unreleased Detox.) And yet, in spite of having the ability to hear the record for free online, more than 1 million fans bought Chinese Democracy. Perhaps what they were really purchasing were Chinese Democracy coasters.

4. Garth Brooks, Garth Brooks In … The Life Of Chris Gaines (1999)
Terms like “success” and “failure” need to be set aside when assessing Garth Brooks’ infamous 1999 album, The Life Of Chris Gaines. Brooks’ decision to ditch his mega-popular, big hat-wearing country-singer persona in order to take on the guise of a dark, soul patch-donning alt-rocker is considering one of the strangest—if not out-and-out disastrous—career decisions ever. Released at end of a smashingly profitable decade for Brooks, The Life Of Chris Gaines seems like a gesture of a man who’s content to take all of the goodwill he’s stored up over the past 10 years, put it in a barrel, and set it on fire. And yet The Life Of Chris Gaines went double platinum; had it come out in 2011, it would have ranked as one of the year’s best-selling albums, besting the likes of Drake and Jay-Z and Kanye West. It’s an album whose “popularity” should be the envy of most artists. 

5. Quiet Riot, Condition Critical (1984)
The unforeseen triumph of Quiet Riot’s 1983 album Metal Health raised heavy metal—for the first time—to the peak of the Billboard album chart. Never mind the fact that the album had approximately three good songs on it. But as the old saying goes: Fluke us twice, shame on us. Condition Critical is Quiet Riot’s follow-up to Metal Health, and it doesn’t even have the dignity to serve up mediocrity and unoriginality with a suitable side of attitude. Instead, it coasts on yet another note-for-note Slade cover (“Mama Weer All Crazee Now” rather than Metal Health’s “Cum On Feel The Noize”) and a whole lot of filler. Really, it makes sense that a glorified cover band unable to write decent songs that scored an unexpected hit might try to use the same formula the next time out. The puzzler is this: America fell for it, making Condition Critical one of the least plausible, wholly undeserving platinum successes ever.

6. Eddie And The Cruisers soundtrack (1983)
How big was Bruce Springsteen’s mega-selling Born In The U.S.A. in 1984? So big that the blatant Springsteen rip-offs compiled on the Eddie And The Cruisers soundtrack also went platinum. Guilty of all the rank nostalgia and empty rock mythmaking that Springsteen detractors unfairly leveled at The Boss, 1983’s Eddie And The Cruisers told the story of a ’60s rock star who dies mysteriously (or does he?) and the supposed lost masterwork that he left behind that sounds an awful lot like a bad facsimile of music released 20 years later. The public originally rejected Cruisers mania when the film arrived in theaters in 1983—it grossed less than $5 million—but the film found an audience on video and the song “On The Dark Side” (which many people mistook for a Springsteen song) became a hit. It was a good con, but it couldn’t last: A sequel, Eddie And The Cruisers II: Eddie Lives, tanked. 

7. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (1978)
The film adaptation of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was widely reviled upon its release, earning bad reviews and attracting thin crowds. But when the soundtrack album came out five weeks ahead of the movie, people shelled out for it anyway. They weren’t necessarily buying a pig in a poke, either: The soundtrack featured hit covers of Beatles songs by Aerosmith and Earth, Wind & Fire and boasted a list of proven hitmakers that included Alice Cooper, Billy Preston, and, most prominently, Peter Frampton and The Bee Gees, the stars of the film. (Also present: Steve Martin and George Burns.) Whatever highlights the album offers drown in a sea of overproduced Beatles covers, and though sales fell off after the movie bombed, it still sold enough to remain a fixture at thrift stores to this day. Sandy Farina fans on a budget, take note and act accordingly.