My Love: Essential Collection (2008) Era

In 2008, My Love: Essential Collection career spanning English compilation was released. It started with two weeks at #1 in the Compilation Chart, selling 46,000 physical copies in 2008.

What about her back catalog? Below are sales of all Celine Dion albums from 2003 to 2008.

Early Years Albums

1983 Du Soleil Au Cœur – 12,329
1986 Chansons En Or – 140
1987 Incognito – 130
1994 Les Premières Années – 14,492
1995 Les Premières Chansons Vol 1 – 10,086
1995 Les Premières Chansons Vol 2 – 4,767
1997 The Collection 82-88 – 13,286
1999 Early Singles – 1,441
2001 Indispensables Celine Dion – 8,167
2001 Classique – A Love Collection – 143

Interestingly, those releases selling mostly on the back of D’Amour Ou D’Amitié hit, add for an impressive tally of 65,000 copies sold. An other interest point is the fact her early studio albums that got released in Canada only have never been available since. Among 80s releases, only her first compilation Du Soleil Au Coeur sold a decent amount because it was reissued on CD in 2002 while the other two remain LP / Cassettes only.

Other packages figures like the one of The Collection 82-88 are combined figures for all similar packages sharing the same tracklist.

English Studio Albums & Compilations

1990 Unison  – 10,408
1993 Celine Dion – 7,686
1993 The Colour Of My Love – 7,774
1996 Falling Into You – 19,287
1997 Let’s Talk About Love – 29,492
1998 These Are Special Times – 7,657
2002 A New Day Has Come – 95,281

1999 All The Way… A Decade Of Songs – 19,830
2000 The Collector’s Series Volume One (Tout En Amour) – 6,596
2004 Unison / Celine Dion / The Colour Of My Heart – 249
2007 Falling Into You / Let’s Talk About Love / A New Day Has Come – 2,341

Sales of all six English studio albums from the 90s are quite steady, with the two 1996-7 million sellers outperforming logically other albums, Let’s Talk About Love ahead thanks to the presence of her My Heart Will Go On signature song. A New Day Has Come figure is misleading as it was released in 2002 and still quite alive by 2003.

The striking figure on this list is the one of All The Way… A Decade Of Songs that ends up incredibly lower than Let’s Talk About Love despite that one being a decent catalog seller but nothing mind blowing. How is this possible? Quite simply because from a French point of view this isn’t the most relevant package owning her biggest English hits and we are quickly going to see why…

French Studio Albums & Compilations

1991 Dion Chante Plamondon  – 12,288
1995 D’Eux – 95,260
1998 S’il Suffisait D’Aimer – 67,847

2003 D’Eux / S’il Suffisait D’Aimer – 26,666
2005 D’Eux / S’il Suffisait D’Aimer / 1 Fille et 4 Types – 2,713
2008 D’Eux / D’Elles – 439

1994 A L’Olympia – 13,946
1996 Live A Paris – 34,435
1999 Au Coeur Du Stade – 75,710

With no surprise D’Eux appears to be the artist greatest catalog seller with a very healthy figure of 125,000 units with all multi-CD packages, an average of almost 21,000 copies per year. What’s more surprising is how strongly S’il Suffisait D’Aimer does as it sold 97,000 units in the same period.

An other impressive catalog seller is Au Coeur Du Stade live album with as much as 76,000 copies sold, nearly four times more than All The Way… A Decade Of Song best of. This latter album sells poorly very precisely because of the former record selling well. Indeed, Au Coeur Du Stade contains Celine Dion very early hit D’Amour Ou D’Amitié, her breakthrough adult career hit Ziggy, all her biggest 1995-1998 French hits (Pour Que Tu M’Aimes Encore, Je Sais Pas, S’il Suffisait D’Aimer) but also both Let’s Talk About Love and My Heart Will Go On. This tracklist makes Au Coeur Du Stade pretty much the best career retrospective of the artist for French public.

It must be noted On Ne Change Pas best of was released in late 2005. It decreased a bit yearly sales of Celine Dion French catalog albums, thus those yearly averages from 2003 to 2008 are lower than sales the same albums managed before this period.

Exploitation of the artist catalog continued in 2010 with Taking Chances World Tour: The Concert as no new material wasn’t released during several years. The #5 peaking set was certified Gold (50,000) thanks to copies shipped along with the DVD as the album itself only sold 26,000 copies for the year.