Why Is Bob Marley’s ‘Legend’ Still Reggae’s #1 Album?

Forty-one years after it was first released, Marley’s Legend compilation once again sits at #1 on the Billboard Reggae Album chart.

The #1 record on the Billboard Reggae Chart for Sept. 20 was the Bob Marley & The Wailers’ Legend compilation released in 1984, suggesting that reggae has made little commercial progress in the American market in the last forty years, stranded in a vacuum in which newer releases and artists struggle to thrive.

The chart consists of the genre’s top ten albums, and its newest release was issued in 2022. That was Wisdom by Stick Figure, the twenty-year old American reggae band that also has two other, older records on the independent Ruffwood label on the week’s chart at #4 (2019’s World on Fire) and #8 (Set in Stone from 2015).

Marley’s Legend Album

Beyond its considerable age and over 900 weeks on the Billboard Top 200 where it currently sits at #126, Legend is also a record that conceals the edges of Marley’s political critiques of capitalism in favor of his innocuous anthems of peace and love.

Given reggae’s historically Afrocentric outlook and rejection of Western historical narratives that marginalized Black cultures, the enduring popularity of Legend raises some major market questions, as the album has now sold over eighteen million copies in America alone. The record’s success also demonstrates that white audiences are the primary consumers of the diluted representation of Marley’s musical story.

Originally released by Island Records before the label was assimilated into Polygram’s empire which itself later became part of the Universal Music Group, Legend was soon reggae’s biggest-selling album. As Island’s founder, Chris Blackwell, points out in his 2022 memoir, Legend specifically targeted the white mainstream audience by deliberately avoiding the political confrontation of albums like 1979’s landmark Survival. This commercial strategy became central to the record’s long-term success, though it ultimately only provided a safe facsimile of the reggae experience.

The Reggae Chart And The Major Labels

Beyond Marley’s material, major labels figure prominently in reggae’s mainstream distribution as evidenced by the current chart, with Universal having the strongest foothold.

Another compilation, Best of Shaggy: The Boombastic Collection, occupies second position, and this 2008 release like Marley’s Legend is also distributed by the Universal Music Group. This major label distribution scenario presents a paradox in which a music form that gained much of its cultural credibility from resisting establishment norms has many of its key assets controlled by the world’s largest record company.

Sean Paul’s Dutty Classic Collection is at #3 on the independent VP label with its roots in reggae and dancehall, but Paul’s releases first crossed over to the pop mainstream in 2002 when the double-platinum Grammy-winning Dutty Rock album (at #6 on the Sept. 20 listing) reached the pop top ten alongside the hit single, “Gimme the Light.” Here too, major label distribution and promotion proved crucial as VP formed an alliance with Atlantic Records to boost Sean Paul’s sales and career which prospered up to 2006.

UB40’s Greatest Hits, first released in 2008 and distributed by Universal Music, is at #5 on the Billboard Reggae Albums chart. All of the group’s American Top 40 pop singles were cover versions of pop hits, from the chart-topping “Red Red Wine” – originally by Neil Diamond in 1968 – that they first charted in America in 1984, to 1993’s even more successful “Can’t Help Falling In Love,” previously a 1961 hit for Elvis Presley. These vintage records are the key selling points of the hits compilation.

The Marley family accounts for the top ten’s final two positions with Damian ‘Jr. Gong’ Marley at #9 with 2005’s gold Welcome to Jamrock, followed by his father Bob’s 1977 gold Exodus album, re-entering the chart. Both releases are distributed by Universal Music.

Marley On Film

It was primarily Legend’s music at the core of the 2024 hit biopic Bob Marley: One Love which yielded its own original motion picture soundtrack album that derived nine of its seventeen tracks from the 1984 collection. As a result, Legend has become an even larger element in Marley folklore as the film reaped box office takings of over $180 million worldwide.

Out of the top ten reggae albums for Sept. 20, only Bob Marley’s Legend – perhaps aided by the film’s success – had a pop presence on the Top 200, indicating that the sales of the other records is marginal at best. While other variations of the hit compilation have included 2013’s curious Legend Remixed, forty-one years after its first release, the original collection still remains reggae’s flagship despite the commercial compromises that it embodies.