Physical Singles Sales
Released during the disco fever with outstanding physical single sales in various markets, Grease ended up as one of the biggest selling era ever for this format. It’s first two singles topped the 2 million mark in the US, singles 2 and 3 sat inside the all-time top selling singles in the UK until the change of millennium while You’re The One That I Want remains one of the Top 5 best selling singles ever in France, just to point out a few examples.
As a reminder, the weighting is done with a 10 to 3 ratio between one album and one physical single.
Grease – 4,100,000
You’re The One That I Want – 10,400,000
Summer Nights – 4,900,000
Hopelessly Devoted To You – 2,400,000
Sandy – 1,100,000
Greased Lightnin’ – 900,000
Grease Megamix – 600,000
All in all, the massive total of 24,4 million physical singles sold, a big 7,32 million albums sales equivalent. You’re The One That I Want cracks the 10 million mark. While many big hits from the past are claimed at such amounts, those who really achieved it a very rare and this song is one of them.
Why not add analysis for the ‘Grease 2’ soundtrack here, as well? Yeah, I know it was flop, but still…
How did you get the sales for Olivia’s Greatest Hits Vol. 2 at 5.9 million worldwide.It Only Certified 2,815,000 Units Worldwide.
Hi GaryHuston!
Certifications are quite pointless at times, especially for old compilations. In the US for example, the album was last certified in 1984 at 2xP, which wasn’t even a date-specific cert since that’s when multi-platinum awards were first introduced.
I would really2 love it if you could do a CSPC of Olivia Newton John. She was a really2 big global superstar back in the 70s and mid 80s. I believe her results would be very impressive. Hope you give it a thought.
Yes, I remember checking out her chart positions etc many years ago and being surprised at the level of success she had in her earlier days, prior to Grease, especially in places like the US, Canada and Japan.
MJD Did estimate her single sales about ten years ago on Ukmix. About 55 million singles, one of the best selling female artists.She is also so huge in Japan , album Physical oricon sales nearly 400k.
I must admit though, I know next to none of her stuff pre Grease and not really much post, bar Physical and Xanadu.
When I was a kid/teenager, I always thought she was actually an actress first and foremost and just released a few songs from her films etc. To say I was shocked, when I looked into her career and found out she was first and foremost a music artist and a very successful one at that, would be an understatement!
I would really2 love it if you could do a CSPC of Olivia Newton John. She was a really2 big global superstar back in the 70s and mid 80s. I believe her results would be very impressive. Hope you give it a thought.
I’v always thought that Olivia was the first to benefit from the success of the movie and its music. She acquired Pop immortality that her previous MOR hits would not have granted. With this soundtrack she won grammy and academy awards nominations and most of all she enjoyed a few years of international pop stardom and reached Europe and South-America.
Hello MJD,
Gigantic success for this album, but less impressive than I imagined. I was sure that its CSPC total would be greater than Led Zeppelin IV.
In this article “http://chartmasters.org/2016/04/france-best-selling-albums-ever-summary-1970-1979/7/”, you wrote that Grease OST total in France was 2.64m, and here it’s only 2.04m. Is it a typo, or did you find another data?
Tony
I hope you’ll do a similar one on the legendary “Bodyguard OST” 😉
Hi Luminator!
I’ll be doing it as part of Whitney breakdown, both her own Bodyguard count related to her tracks only and the total of the comprehensive album.
Hello Tony!
The edition of both Grease and Saturday Night Fever France sales articles is ongoing at the moment. In fact I have solid evidences that all figures reported from 1978 to 1984 about both albums were done using the discs count rather than albums count, meaning all figures were doubled! I also downgraded that way figures of New-Zealand, Netherlands, Sweden and more posted on Billboard, all of them doubled as well!