With a combination of great music, incredibly supportive fan bases, a daily television show dedicated to those fan bases, and the timing of it all happening in the final decade before iTunes and streaming took over, the TRL era provided an optimal setting for record breaking album sales.

Ask any artist who was popular back when Carson Daly was on MTV every afternoon, and they’ll likely tell you the TRL years, which were from 1998 to 2008, were the absolute best time to be an artist with a Top 40 hit.

Diamond status, which indicates an album has sold over 10 million copies, is rarified air, but we found 14 albums from TRL favorites that reached that sales plateau. 

Santana – 'Supernatural' (1999)

15x Platinum

With all of the young pop stars that dominated the era, who would have thought a middle aged guitarist would top them all in album sales? Well, when that middle aged guitarist is the legendary Carlos Santana, and you pair him up with Matchbox Twenty’s Rob Thomas, you get a hit so “Smooth” that it leads an album to incredible sales heights.

Supernatural also featured the follow up single “Maria Maria,” with The Product G&B, but only “Smooth” inspired one of the greatest t-shirts ever.