France Best Selling Albums Ever: All-Time Ranking (2015)
Instrumental Albums
01 Jean-Michel Jarre – Oxygène (1976) : 2 065 000
02 Richard Clayderman – Rêveries (1979) : 1 400 000
03 Jean-Michel Jarre – Equinoxe (1978) : 1 350 000
04 Jean-Philippe Audin & Diego Modena – Ocarina (1991) : 1 290 000
05 André Rieu – Valses (1997) : 1 080 000
Most instrumental artists are one-off, at least on this magnitude of sales. Andre Rieu often sold well of his albums but came nowhere near his Valses album with his remaining records, same for Richard Clayderman who sold tons of albums within’ a few years before disappearing.
The only exception is Jean-Michel Jarre who managed two monster sellers plus various others over half a million units, confirming his status as French electronic godfather.
Where is “Femmes D’Aujourd’hui” by Jeanne Mas ? 🙁
Hello! Well, Femmes D’Aujourd’hui is one of those albums that came very close to the million mark but missed it – in France as once Belgium and Switzerland sales added it just get there. This album had the disadvantage to be big in 1986 / first half of 1987 while the market exploded just a few months later thanks to legislation change that saw taxes (TVA) on records be largely reduced. Plus, the very low catalog appeal of the album prevented it from ultimately breaking the mark as there have been very low numbers of LP to CD replacement for… Read more »
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