Just to prove there's no such thing as bad publicity, hip-hop star Eminem's year of controversy has helped make him the biggest selling artist of the year in Canada.

According to SoundScan Canada's retail record sales data, Eminem's "The Marshall Mathers LP" is the best selling album of 2000, moving 679,567 copies -- despite (or perhaps partly because of) a move by Canadian politicians to ban the rapper from performing in Toronto this summer.

Throughout much of the year, Eminem was camped at the top of the album charts alongside Britney Spears, so it is no surprise her sophomore release, "Oops! ... I Did It Again", came in second, with sales of 623,191.

Another pop act, *NSync, placed third, with 589,630 copies sold of "No Strings Attached." The Beatles' fourth-place finish with "Beatles 1" is especially remarkable, considering the singles collection was only released in November. It nonetheless managed to amass sales of 564,783 in the pre-Christmas season. Last year's big seller, "Supernatural", enjoyed a sales hangover for Carlos Santana that continued long past new year's eve. The star-studded, Grammy-winning collection sold 563,502 in 2000 -- enough to make it the year's fifth-best selling record.

The Backstreet Boys' "Black & Blue" (437,502 sold), the "Muchdance 2001" and "Big Shiny Tunes 5" collections (431,100 and 424,393, respectively), Limp Bizkit's "Chocolate Starfish & The Hot Dog Flavored Water", (395,112) and Creed's "Human Clay" (383,492) rounded out the top 10.

The best-selling Canadian artist was Celine Dion, whose compilation "AllThe Way: A Decade Of Song" finished in 27th place. Remarkably, fellow Canadian songbird Shania Twain's "Come On Over," which was first released in October, 1997, continues to sell in impressive numbers, and managed to finish 2000 at #32. The Tragically Hip's "Music@Work" finished at 46th place, just one spot ahead of fellow Canadian Ginette Reno's seasonal collection, "Un Grand Noel D'Amour."