The 25 Best-Selling Albums of All-Time

They carried with them a tape of their nearly finished second album, which included the madly romantic Babyface-produced ballad ''I'll Make Love to You'' (a song later to become, in a tie with Whitney Houston's ''I Will Always Love You,'' the longest-running No. 1 pop single of all time). The day after the game, the group dropped in on Minneapolis-based producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and previewed their new tracks.

''We told them the stuff sounded really great but they still needed a good begging song,'' Jam remembers. When Boyz II Men returned three weeks later, Jam and Lewis had written, and recorded the backing tracks for, ''On Bended Knee.'' They weren't prepared for the group's reaction.

''They said it sounded like a Garth Brooks song,'' Jam laughs. ''They'd be singing it and suddenly launch into these hilarious country drawls. I laid in a steel guitar and we went with it. It was crazy, but the funny thing was that even doing drawls they were in perfect harmony.''

When Boyz II Men's II came out six months later, it was more than perfect harmony — it was the perfect recipe. They dittoed the hip-hop rhythms and lush doo-wop vocals that had made their debut, Cooleyhighharmony, a smash, but took the edge off their super-prep image with good ol' soul sensuality, as evidenced by ''On Bended Knee,'' which was released — without the country drawls — as the album's second single. It sailed to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. Back off, Garth.

Albums sold in U.S.: 11 million
Weeks at No. 1: 5
Weeks on Chart: 86 (and counting)
Released: Aug. 23, 1994

24 Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em
M.C. Hammer

Jim Morrison had his leather. Springsteen had his denim. But if any musician were ever defined by his pants, it would be M.C. Hammer.

Garish and expansive, the Oakland rapper's baggy trousers could be all things to all people in the summer of 1990. To his detractors, their satin finish suited the glossiness of this sophomore album — 13 cuts of bubblegum hip-hop that, propelled by the frat-party popularity of his Rick James rip-off, ''U Can't Touch This,'' sold more than 15 million copies worldwide, won three Grammys, and topped Billboard's pop chart for 21 weeks (before being ousted by the debut of his Teutonic doppelganger, Vanilla Ice). Critics, including several rappers who took potshots at him in song and video, felt a still-emerging street genre had been swallowed up by Hammer's (he dropped the M.C. in 1991) videogenic dance steps and dopey lyrics.

But if droopy, the drawers in question were also wide: In contrast to a rap scene dominated from the East Coast by Public Enemy and from the West by N.W.A, a single like ''U Can't Touch This'' had the melodic familiarity needed to unlock tightly secured radio and MTV playlists. What had been largely an edgy, urban phenomenon started riding the airwaves into teenybopper territory, a process that soon rendered Hammer (who filed for bankruptcy on April 3) and his candy rap obsolete.

But even if today's gangsta rappers are harder than Hammer, their pants are just as baggy. Says MTV executive vice president of programming Andy Schuon: ''This was the song, and the man, and the whole package that brought rap music to a much wider group of people.''

Albums sold in U.S.: 10 million
Weeks at No. 1: 21
Weeks on Chart: 108
Released: Feb. 12, 1990

25 Tapestry
Carole King

Ode Records president Lou Adler recalls when he sensed the potential of a new album he was producing in the fall of 1970. ''Love Story was a big movie at the time, and I remember saying 'This is our Love Story.' In terms that it would be people's love stories and that it would be a success. And I remember one of the musicians, who was pretty hip, looking at me and saying 'Love Story?!'''

Adler was right, though. In the aftermath of Altamont and Kent State, a generation of rock fans approaching 30 needed to chill out, and that album — Carole King's Tapestry — was their comfort blanket. Inspired by the open-wound ballads of friend James Taylor, King, a former Brill Building hit cranker, presented Adler with ''an avalanche of great songs.'' The deluge included ''You've Got a Friend'' (later a hit for Taylor), ''So Far Away'' (about the loneliness brought on by King's first tour), and ''It's Too Late,'' an inordinately level headed breakup song. ''She touched on subjects that hadn't been touched upon yet for women,'' Adler says. ''And the songs touch the heart of every generation that goes through what she wrote about.''

Recorded with help from Taylor and Joni Mitchell, who was cutting Blue in the studio next door (''It was a musically and emotionally incestuous time,'' Adler says), Tapestry won four Grammys, including Album of the Year. Only one downbeat memory remains: The embroidered quilt pictured on the inner sleeve, which King stitched during the sessions, was presented to Adler — who can't remember where it is. ''The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame called me, and I haven't been able to find it,'' he says. ''I forgot how sad I was that I lost it until they called.''

Albums sold in U.S.: 10 million
Weeks at No. 1: 15
Weeks on Chart: 302
Released: Feb. 10, 1971

Written and reported by David Browne, Elysa Gardner, Jeff Gordinier, Nisid Hajari, Alanna Nash, Ethan Smith, Dan Snierson, Russ Spencer, and Chris Willman