Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975 (1976)

Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975) is the first compilation album by the American rock band the Eagles, released by Asylum Records on February 17, 1976. It contains a selection of songs from the band's first four albums, which were released from 1972 to 1975. On the U.S. Billboard 200 chart, the album reached number 1, where it stayed for five weeks.

The album has the distinction of being the first album to receive a Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) Platinum certification, which was introduced in 1976 to recognize albums that ship at least one million copies in the United States. It was ranked number four on Billboard's year-end album chart for 1976, and in September 2025, it broke the 500-week mark (non-consecutive). The RIAA has certified the album 40 times Platinum, indicating sales of 40 million copies in the United States alone, which would make Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975) the best-selling album of the 20th century in the United States (it was surpassed in Platinum certifications by Michael Jackson's Thriller after Jackson's death in 2009, but regained the title in August 2018). In 2016, the album was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Background

Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975) comprises nine singles released between 1972 and 1975, plus the album track "Desperado". All of the singles except "Tequila Sunrise" had charted in the top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100, and five had reached the top ten. "One of These Nights" and "Best of My Love" had both topped the chart.

Irving Azoff, the manager of the Eagles, said: "We decided it was time to put out the first greatest-hits because we had enough hits." According to Don Felder, however, none of the band members had any say in the decision to release the compilation album, which they complained was "nothing more than a ploy by the record company to sell product without having to pay additional production costs". Don Henley was unhappy that songs like "Tequila Sunrise" and "Desperado" were lifted out of the context of the original album in a way that he thought was detrimental to the nature, quality, and meaning of the music. He said: "All the record company was worried about were their quarterly reports. They didn't give a shit whether the greatest hits album was good or not, they just wanted product." Despite being unhappy with the album's release, the band nevertheless reasoned that it gave them more time to work on the Hotel California album, which was released later in 1976.

Artwork

The cover of the album is a photograph of a piece of art created by artist Boyd Elder (aka "El Chingadero"), whose work was also used for the cover of One of These Nights. The piece consists of a painted plastic cast of an eagle skull against a light-blue background made of silver mylar. The bumpy appearance of the background gave rise to a myth that it was covered in cocaine powder that the band snorted after the photo shoot. The band chose not to debunk that myth, though Glenn Frey reportedly also noticed the resemblance and told Elder that the background reminded him of "a field of blow" (a slang term for cocaine). The artist was paid $5,000 for his work on the cover.