G) The Carpenters

During the first half of the 70s, the Carpenters were ridiculously popular in Japan. This resulted into an insane number of Japan-only compilations released by the duet, one of them being Twenty-Two Hits Of The Carpenters, one of the biggest selling albums ever in the country, issued in 1995.

As a Japanese-only release, there is obviously no imports to add. The album was charted inside the Top 50 for its first 36 weeks, moving the absurd total of 2,094,000 units. By the end of 1997, the album was already on 2,3 million units sold.

What’s interesting about this album is the various re-entries it got once charts got expanded to a Top 300.

Week – Ranking – Sales
01/12/2003 – 159 – 1376
08/12/2003 – 221 – 1286
15/12/2003 – 252 – 1061
22/12/2003 – 193 – 1301
29/12/2003 – 203 – 1331
12/01/2004 – 177 – 3436
19/01/2004 – 205 – 1244
26/01/2004 – 236 – 917
09/02/2004 – 269 – 830
16/02/2004 – 270 – 793
23/02/2004 – 268 – 839
01/03/2004 – 293 – 650
15/03/2004 – 255 – 813
22/03/2004 – 266 – 765
29/03/2004 – 234 – 904
26/04/2004 – 271 – 653
21/02/2005 – 206 – 1043
30/04/2007 – 126 – 1116
07/05/2007 – 155 – 1308
14/05/2007 – 245 – 865
21/05/2007 – 182 – 858
27/10/2008 – 280 – 480
04/05/2009 – 171 – 905
11/05/2009 – 179 – 793
18/05/2009 – 136 – 935
25/05/2009 – 282 – 415

As you can notice, the album never re-entered the Top 100 which means if charts hadn’t been expanded, it would have remained off radar during all those years. Fact is, this album was moving an average of more than 500 units a week all along, which is nearly 200,000 copies over seven years.

Gold best of was reissued and promoted in 2003 yet, decreasing Twenty-Two Hits Of The Carpenters appeal. From 1998 to 2002, this latter album was selling a minimum of 50,000 copies a year. By 2016 and although it was replaced by various new hits packages since, this album is clearly close to the 3 million mark, some 700,000 units ahead of its Oricon total despite there is not a single import involved.