This is pitiful: Just three albums have topped the 1 million mark in U.S. sales so far this year. But the tally will be more like 12 before the year ends, which would nearly equal the tally of 13 in each of the last two years. The three albums that have sold 1 million or more copies already this year are Adele's sophomore album, 21 (4,027,000); One Direction's debut album, Up All Night (1,254,000) and Lionel Richie's surprise comeback hit, Tuskegee (1,020,000).

Four albums that have already been released will probably make it over the 1 million threshold before the year is out. They are Justin Bieber's Believe (which has sold 902K copies so far this year), Carrie Underwood's Blown Away (823K), Luke Bryan's 2011 release Tailgates & Tanlines (802K) and Mumford & Sons' Babel, which sold 600K this week and will probably sell another 155K next week.

The most surprising fact in last week's obits for Andy Williams was that his version of "Moon River" was never released as a single. The gorgeous ballad was Williams' signature song for 50 years. He even named his theater in Branson, Mo. (the Moon River Theater) after it.

But Cadence Records, Williams' record company from 1956 to 1961, questioned the song's youth appeal and discouraged the star from recording it. Williams moved onto Columbia Records, where he recorded the song in January 1962. But by then, two recordings of the song (by its composer, Henry Mancini, and by R&B hit-maker Jerry Butler) had become top 15 hits. Williams sang "Moon River" on the Oscars in April 1962 (where it won as Best Song). The following month, Williams' album Moon River & Other Great Movie Themes cracked the Billboard chart. Even without spawning a Hot 100 single, Williams' album was a fixture on the chart for more than three years.

Williams' rendition of "Moon River" isn't the only recording that everybody knows, even though it was never released as a single. Here are 10 more.

If you're under 50, you probably have no idea what a big star Andy Williams was in the 1960s and 1970s. The ultra-smooth singer and TV personality hosted the first seven Grammy Awards telecasts. In fact, producer Pierre Cossette was only able to sell the concept of the Grammys as a live telecast when he assured ABC that he could deliver a big star like Williams as host.

Williams, who died Tuesday at his home in Branson, Mo. at age 84, was in the vein of such crooners as Bing Crosby and Perry Como. He was just about the last singer in that traditional pop style to become a major star—not counting latter-day revivalists such as Harry Connick Jr. and Michael Buble.

Michael Jackson's 1987 album Bad re-enters The Billboard 200 at #23, while a deluxe 25th anniversary edition debuts at #46. The two albums sold a combined total of 27K copies, about one-sixth of the number (166K) that a 25th anniversary release of Jackson's most famous album, Thriller, sold in its first week in February 2008. (That was 16 months before Jackson's untimely death, so sympathy wasn't a factor.) Thriller 25 would have ranked #2 for two weeks if catalog albums had been eligible to make The Billboard 200 (as they are now).

In a way, this week's so-so debut for Bad is fitting: In its time, Bad was seen by many as a somewhat disappointing follow-up to Thriller. Was that judgment fair or unfair? You decide.